I do not own RWBY or any of the characters.

Day Off

Fox sighed. After far too long, they'd been cleared to have a night off. Or, at least, it felt like far too long. Between missions, worrying about trying to find a way to fix himself, and training, he felt like he'd been going nonstop. He'd been training with Oscar to teach him to fight the same way he trained a couple of Ozpin's previous incarnations, and the way more than a few had trained him. Ruby had probably seen the most improvement, though. Instead of just using her Semblance for speed, she'd learned she could do more. Such as flying at a block with it, then separating into three spiraling red objects, rather than one, to go around it before rejoining.

Fox sighed, resting his face in his hands. He and Blake were currently in their room with the rest of Team RWBY, all of them waiting for team JNPR to finish getting ready for their various groups' plans. Jaune and Pyrrha were going on a date to the movies, Ruby, Ren, and Nora were going to an election party with Penny, who was in charge of security at the party with Marrow, the party being held by Robyn. Of course, the one plan that truly stumped Fox was his and Blake's own plans. Somehow, in some unknowable twist of whatever cruel demon had decided to punish Fox, Team FNKI had invited he, Blake, and Yang out to a club to dance, and Blake had decided she wanted to go, which, of course, meant that Fox was powerless to say no.

"What is it you're doing again?" Weiss asked.

"Team FNKI invited us out to go dancing," Blake said. "I thought it would be a good idea to get our minds of of..." she glanced at Fox for a second. "...well, everything really."

"I thought you said Team FNKI was annoying," Ruby pointed out.

"They are," Fox groaned. "I'm all for going to a club, but only if it's not with them."

"Relax," Yang laughed, she having also decided to go, both for having been invited individually, and for Blake having extended her an invitation as well. "That's the best part about dance clubs." she held her hands up to point at her ears and began to whisper. "I can't hear you."

Blake laughed softly. Fox sighed again and Blake slipped her hand into his, giving him a reassuring smile. He smiled back, giving her a quick kiss just as the door opened, Ren and Nora arriving to collect Ruby. Fox ignored their conversation as Blake moved to sit sideways in his lap, tucking her head under his chin.

"Tonight's going to be fun," Blake promised. "We can drink, dance, ignore Team FNKI, and spend the whole night with just us. We can forget about Salem, the Grimm, the Generals, and your past lives. At least for tonight, it'll just be you, me, and Yang enjoying ourselves." She raised her head to whisper into his ear. "And maybe we can sneak away from Yang to have some fun with just the two of us tonight."

Fox's eyes widened slightly before he smiled, shaking his head. "I think I can accept that."

Blake smiled, kissing him for a few seconds before someone cleared their throat. He turned to look, seeing Ava and Wulfe standing in the doorway. Blake sighed, seeing the serious expression the two of them wore and gave Fox one last quick kiss before standing, letting Fox up. He walked out into the hallway with them just as Yang began to try to teach Blake to dance a bit before they went to the club. Fox chuckled. Blake wasn't very good, but thanks to one of his more social incarnations, he'd be able to fix that within a couple of hours and a few drinks. Assuming Wulfe and Ava weren't about to tell him he couldn't go.

"Hey, I'm going to the movies with Jaune and Pyrrha," Oscar said, sticking his head into the door. "I'd appreciate someone to hang out with so I don't third-wheel."

"Look no further," Weiss said, not wanting to go to Robyn's victory party, when the vote wasn't even finished, and not wanting to go dancing and get involved in whatever kind of a mess Yang liking Blake seemed to have made everyone think Blake and Fox's relationship was now.

She followed him out of the room and past Fox and his former teammates, both of whom had remained silent while he was in hearing range.

"What's up?" Fox asked.

"Tyrian Callows is in Mantle," Wulfe said.

"You're sure?" Fox asked.

"Yes," Wulfe nodded. "I smelled him."

"Fuck," Fox sighed.

"How do you know Tyrian?" Blake asked, leaning against the door frame.

Wulfe's eyes widened and he swore under his breath.

"Relax," Fox said, holding his hand out to Blake, who took it and walked over, hugging him. "I've got no secrets from her. As for your question, we were a part of the group that hunted him down and captured him. This was back when we worked for the White Fang under Sienna directly. She didn't want him to ruin any chance we had for becoming equals with humans, so she sent our team, with Leon back then, after him. We fought him probably half a dozen times while we were trying to pin him down, but he always found a way to escape. At least, until that one Huntsman managed to trap him. And then Salem rescued him."

"Tyrian was captured once?" Blake asked. "Who was he?"

"A serial killer," Wulfe said.

"A psychopath," Fox said.

Blake nodded. "So, what do we do?"

"We need to be careful," Fox said. "God only knows what he's got planned."

Blake nodded again.

"There's something else we need to discuss," Ava said. "Have you found a way to settle your past lives yet?"

"No," Fox said. "Nothing."

Ava nodded. "Please keep looking. We're only staying with Atlas's military for as long as your condition continues. Once you're better, if you want us to, we'll be your team again."

Fox smiled, nodding. "Can't wait."

"We should get back," Wulfe said. "Be careful."

Fox nodded shook the hand Wulfe offered. Ava gave him a quick hug before leaving with Wulfe and Fox sighed, walking back to the room where Yang was waiting patiently.

"Ready to go?" Blake asked.

"Yeah," Yang smiled.

They all left, meeting up with Team FNKI outside, then heading to the club. Yang was right about one thing. Fox couldn't hear FNKI. He couldn't even hear Blake when she leaned so close to his ear that her lips brushed it. It was deafening, and the pulsing of the base vibrated his entire skeletal system. FNKI almost instantly headed for the dance floor, and Yang, not being one for patience, grabbed both Fox and Blake and dragged them onto it as well. Fortunately, as they were winding their way through the crowd in an attempt to find room to dance, someone seemed to complain about the volume, because it turned down considerably, enough that Fox only had to shout loud enough to hurt his throat a little to be heard.

"Do what I do!" Yang shouted over the music, beginning to do a few simple dances.

Fox rolled his eyes, grinning and taking Blake's hands. "Follow my lead! One of my past lives loved clubs! You actually probably would have liked that one, Yang! He was kind of like a male you!"

Yang raised an eyebrow, gesturing for Fox to begin. Fox grinned and started to dance. he started off simple for Blake's benefit, since she was mostly just trying to do what he did. However, after a moment, he saw Yang's superior smirk and shot his own back, spinning Blake and pulling her into him, wrapping his arms around her.

"Close your eyes!" Fox instructed over the music. "Let your body do what it wants!"

"I doubt we can do that in a crowd!" Blake shouted back, though quietly that only he could hear her.

He chuckled, pinching her side and she jerked away, laughing. However, after a moment, she settled back against him, closing her eyes and reaching her arms up to wrap them around the back of his neck, her body beginning to sway to the music. He smiled, moving with her, his hands sliding back to rest on her abdomen. She was still obviously new to dancing, but it wasn't as bad as what she had tried in the room. Yang had tried to show her some kind of fancy dance move involving mostly footwork, and Blake had ended up doing an Irish Jig instead. Now that she was at least dancing somewhat, she wasn't sticking out like a sore thumb. Fox cracked an eye open to glance at Yang and caught the jealous look she was giving them. He smiled apologetically, kissing Blake on the cheek before pulling back. She began to turn but she stopped as he stepped around in front of her grabbing Yang by the arm and pulling her over.

"We're supposed to all be dancing together for fun, Yang!" Fox said. "Quit standing off to the side like a grumpy cat!"

"I'm not a grumpy cat!" Yang snapped, blushing slightly, making Blake giggle.

Yang huffed indignantly, but began to dance anyway, the three of them standing in a circle. After a couple of minutes, Yang began to smile and get more into the music, starting to actually enjoy herself. Fang could still see her struggling not to steal glances at Blake, but he couldn't blame her. Not only was Blake beautiful, but she also was natural flexible and graceful, so her dancing, while not the best, seemed to fit her perfectly, making her all the more beautiful. After a few minutes, however, Fox began to wish he had a drink. The music was giving him a headache, and he desperately wanted to numb it with alcohol. He wasn't a big drinker, but this was as good a time as any.

"I'm going to go get a drink!" Fox shouted to them.

Blake turned to him instantly, but he smiled and shook his head, giving her a quick kiss.

"I'll just be a minute!" Fox said. "Trust me!"

"I trust you to not worry enough about your safety!" Blake shouted back.

"It's fine!" Yang shouted. "I could use a drink too, anyway!"

Fox nodded and they all headed for the bar together. Fox got the same thing his party boy past life had always gotten, two tequila shots and a Jack and Coke, and Yang decided he had the right idea and did the same. Then, Fox and Yang each bought Blake a shot.

"Oh, no, that's okay," Blake said as Fox held out her first shot, the music quiet enough at the bar for them to not have to actually yell. "I'm fine. Really."

"You're drinking with us, Blake," Fox said.

"I've never drank before and-"

"Then this is the perfect time to start," Yang said. "Take the shot with us."

Blake hesitated another minute before accepting it and sighing.

"Inhale, drink, swallow, big exhale," Fox said. "it's going to burn and taste like shit."

Blake nodded and Yang and Fox tapped their shot glasses to hers, then tapped them on the bar before draining them. Blake tapped her own on the bar as well before also draining it, forgetting to take a breath first, or exhale afterward. She coughed, stuck her tongue out in an adorably disgusted face, and settled for a grimace. Fox and Yang both laughed.

"You forgot to breathe," Yang said. "It helps. Promise. Next one."

She held out Blake's other shot as she and Fox both grabbed theirs, but Blake shook her head.

"I'm going to pass," Blake said.

"Oh don't be like that," Fox said. "I doubt we can afford to have Yang drink it for you. If she gets drunk she'll just beat up everyone here."

Blake whined miserably but nodded, accepting the shot. This time, she remembered to inhale and breathe out, so her reaction wasn't as bad. However, it was still funny to see her face scrunch up in disgust. Fox smiled, holding out his Jack and Coke and Yang tapped her glass to his before both took a drink. Fox passed his to Blake and she, mistaking it for normal soda, swallowed the entire thing, only to cough and grimace.

"That wasn't soda!" Blake complained

Fox laughed. "It's got a different type of alcohol mixed in."

Blake groaned. "That was so gross! Can't I just have water?"

Fox nodded, laughing, and ordered himself another Jack and Coke, along with getting her a water. She thanked him and drank a quarter of the bottle while he drained his own drink, smiling. Yang, having gotten more shots, finished several of them and grinned at Fox, flicking her eyes at the last three. Fox snorted, draining all three of them at once. Yang nodded approvingly and stood.

"Let's dance!" Yang cheered.

Fox and Blake both laughed, following her back onto the dance floor, once again beginning to all dance together. Fox felt the alcohol starting to kick in as his head began to grow numb slowly, and he could see the same was happening to Yang and Blake. Yang, being a more experienced drinker than Fox's current body was, and vastly more experienced than Blake, was probably only just starting to feel it, while Fox was enjoying the weightless feeling of the early stages of drinking. Blake, on the other hand, was feeling it hard, having never drank before and apparently being a bit of a lightweight. She was smiling widely, had a blush across her cheeks, and was swaying her hips and twisting her body a bit more freely, her eyes closed and hands in the air. Fox smiled. He was glad he'd agreed to this. He may not be a huge fan of clubs in this life, and he may not be a huge fan of Team FNKI, but he did love spending time with Blake, and having Yang around was fun too. Not just because she was in love with Blake, but because she was a friend, and fun to be around.

A hand tapped Fox on the shoulder suddenly and he turned, only to see a form disappearing into the crowd. However, before they were gone, they glanced back at him and he could swear he caught a glimpse of one pink and one brown eye. His eyes widened and he glanced back at Blake and Yang just as Yang began to try and teach Blake a new dance move again. He turned, pursuing the figure through the crowd. They went further and further before finally disappearing. He sighed. His buzz was gone now. He went to the bar again, quickly ordering and taking three shots before getting a vodka mixed with an energy drink, starting back through the crowd. Finally, he got to where he could see Blake and Yang just ahead, only to stop, raising an eyebrow. Yang and Blake had begun to dance together, Blake apparently drunk enough to not notice he had left, and also drunk enough to be dancing pressed against Yang's back in a fairly inappropriate manor. He smirked. He might be able to get back before she noticed, avoiding her anger at him having gone somewhere without her.

However, before he could rejoin them, Yang turned around toward Blake, looping her arms around Blake and pulling her tight against her, Blake's own arms looping around Yang's neck instinctively. Fox could see the surprise and confusion on her face from where he was, even though Blake continued to sway, her body still pressed flush to Yang's likewise gyrating form. Blake opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Yang's lips captured her own. Blake's eyes went wide with shock, then fluttered for a moment before closing as Blake leaned into the kiss. It was at that moment that Fox's head seared in agony, the pain meeting in a joyous union with the feeling of a shrapnel grenade tearing through his chest. His drink fell from his trembling hand, but before it had even hit the ground, Blake gasped harshly, pushing Yang backward. Then, Fox had turned way just before the glass smashed on the floor. His hands clutched at his head as he staggered off the dance floor and to the small hallway leading to the bathroom. He staggered past several intimately entangled couples, one passed out guy being hauled out by his friends, and a girl snorting cocaine off of the back of her hand. Then, he shouldered into the men's bathroom, groaning loudly before collapsing as a fresh stab of white-hot agony seared through his skull. He felt himself cry out in pain by the vibrating in his throat, but his ears had been deafened by the loud music, the ringing in his ears from it, and the pulse currently pounding through his ears like a machinegun. He couldn't breathe. Memories flooded him and stabbed larger and larger spikes of agony into his brain.

He felt the moment when he began to slip. One second he was groaning Blake's name, unable to call out properly, and knowing it wouldn't do him any good, and the next he was swearing and demanding to know where his subordinates were to the illusions standing around him. Then he was on a mountain top, sitting before a grave as he watched the sunrise, tears running down his cheeks as the handgun pressed harder under his chin. Next he was chained to a wall, Salem standing before him, a tentacles Grimm hovering at her side, its barbed, stinger-like tentacles raised and prepared to inject more of its specially created neurotoxin, one which was designed, and very successfully at that, to target the nerve endings responsible for sensations of pain and set them up to one hundred times normal, after which, the Grimm would use the barbs along its tentacles, in conjunction with Salem's claws, to torture him, just for Salem's entertainment, as they had been for the last three months.

Next, he was lying on the floor again, but in an office, watching under a desk as blood slowly spread into his vision, and in his view under the desk, a woman was being raped by six men. Her beautiful face was streaked with makeup and was dotted by bruises, her nose broken, and her mouth currently being used by one of the men, another two busying themselves behind her while the fourth cracked a whip with barbs along the ends of it against her mangled back. Her bright blue eyes, so light they almost glowed, glanced over at him in fear and desperation, but just as she did, his vision began to darken.

Suddenly he was standing on a battlefield. To his right was a brunette with those same blue eyes, bur a completely different appearance. Across the field of corpses from them, still inside the ring the rest of the battling armies had left for the impending fight, stood a man with sandy blonde hair, shining white, albeit blood-stained, armor, and a black cane with a silver grip, currently held as a sword should be. He charged, the woman at his side, her weapon changing from a small metal cylinder to a rapier. The two of them struck at their opponent rapidly and ferociously, and he fended them off seamlessly, as he had the other five times they'd fought him over the course of the war. And then they were the ones on the defensive. The girl spun around a jab and her rapier became a scythe, sweeping around and around at the man, forcing him back before the scythe became a pair of nunchucks. But then, just as the nunchucks became a spear, the fight was over. In a blistering series of strikes that Fox hadn't even been able to track, the man had placed Fox's blade through the woman's heart, and her spear was now impaled in his own. Fox coughed up blood and blinked.

He was on the bathroom floor again, struggling to catch his breath as someone sobbed into his chest. He blinked several times as his memories slowly settled, allowing him to center himself. He stared down at the short black hair and the black cat ears and recognition slowly began to filter into his pain-addled mind. It was Blake. He raised his left hand, noticing that it felt like his body was made of lead, and set it on her head. She gasped instantly, sitting up and catching his hand, sobbing anew as she saw him smiling weakly up at her.

"Hey," he smiled. "I'm glad you made it."

"You almost died!" Blake snapped. "How can you be smiling!?"

"Because you're here," Fox smiled. "You saved me."

Blake grit her teeth, looking like she wanted to smack him. Instead, she settled for kissing him desperately, Fox kissing her back, smiling. After several seconds, she pulled back, wiping her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Blake said, fresh tears running down her cheeks. "I...I kissed Yang."

"I know," Fox said, brushing her tears away. "I saw. Was it the alcohol?"

Blake hesitated. "I think it was a little of everything. I just...I was having so much fun, and then she was there...and I was drunk and...and she kissed me and..."

"And then you kissed her back, but pushed her away once you realized what you were doing," Fox said. "Do you still have feelings for her?"

Blake's face fell even further. "A little. But I still love you! I'd never leave you! And I swear I'll never do this again!"

"I know," Fox smiled, forcing himself into a sitting position, taking a second to kiss her before looking her in the eyes directly. "I know you wouldn't normally do that, Blake. I trust you. I'm not mad at you. Or Yang, for that matter. With us letting her try to win you over, it was probably bound to happen eventually."

Blake sighed. "I should have made it clear that I wasn't interested from the beginning."

Fox smiled, shaking his head. "Really, I don't mind that you two kissed. If it hadn't been for my episode, I might have actually enjoyed watching for a few minutes before interrupting." He smiled as she blushed. He felt bad for lying to her, but if it made her feel better and less guilty, then it was worth it. "You don't have to apologize or feel bad."

Blake nodded, still looking miserable, but helping him to his feet. "I guess we should probably get back to the academy, huh?"

"I'm fine to stay if you are," Fox said. "Now that I've settled, and have you, I'm okay."

"You're sure?" Blake asked. "It's alright if you want to leave."

Fox smiled, kissing her. "I just need a couple drinks to get my buzz back while I get my body working again, and then I'll be good to go."

Blake smiled and nodded, helping him back out of the bathroom. Yang was waiting nervously in the hallway.

"I'm so sorry!" Yang said. "I swear, I didn't mean-"

Fox held up a hand, smiling. "I'm not angry. You don't owe me an apology. Let's just try and enjoy the rest of the night, alright?"

Yang stared at him for a moment before nodding, smiling. "Alright."

Fox nodded and they headed to the bar where Fox got a new vodka drink like the one he'd dropped. He drank it quickly, and ordered a second, drinking it slowly. However, fifteen minutes later, as he was halfway through that one, the pain starting to dull, a siren began to scream through the room, the music cutting instantly. The chaos began almost immediately. People were stampeding out of the room, shoving their way through the doors. Team FNKI began to try to control the panic so everyone could get out unharmed, but they were struggling.

"We need to find the others," Fox said.

Yang and Blake both nodded and they began to force their way out. However, as they got outside, they saw the chaos had only just begun. Jacques Schnee had somehow won the election, and something horrible had happened. Fox could feel it in the air. Even more than the panic of a Grimm attack. Manticores were flying over their head, Sabyrs were running through the street, and the siren was making Fox's head throb agonizingly.

"Let's go."

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