It was a very slow day at The Huntsmen's Footrest, with only a few people in the coffee shop itself and two or three sitting in the outside tables.
This suited Sarah fine. it meant that she did't have to deal with as many of those kids from beacon which were right handfuls excepting one or two teams.
"Hey Connors!" Sam, her boss yelled from behind the serving counter. "There's a new guy outside, take his order!"
"You got it!" She yelled back before making her way to the outside tables where only one person remained.
He was a well dressed man with brown hair, sporting a nice suit with an orange tie and he seemed to be writing a letter of some kind.
"Evening sir." Sarah greeted him. "May I take your order?"
He looked up. "Oh? well can I have a espresso, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother? Thanks doll face." He greeted in a surprisingly familiar voice.
"Of course."
A few minutes later she was back outside with the espresso, putting it on his table.
"Thanks." The man said as he he looked up from the letter he was writing. "Hey are you busy?"
"No, it's been a slow day." Sarah replied.
"Then why don't you join me, I could use someone to talk to." He said before taking a dink from the coffee.
Sarah shrugged, Sam wouldn't mind if she took a small break.
"So what brings you to Vale?" She asked curiously.
"What makes you think i'm not from here?" He asked back.
"The suit." Sarah explained. "It's not sold at The Ocular Vision, which is the only place you can shop for that type of suit." She then pointed at said shop which was directly across from them. "So odds are your not from around her mister...?"
He chuckled. "Gates. Issac Gates. But everyone just calls me Felix."
"Sarah Connors." She introduced herself back. "So, like I said, what brings you to Vale?"
"Oh just a business trip" Felix said nonchalantly. "Right back at ya, why are you working at some coffee shop Sarah?"
"Well it pays the bills." She shrugged.
He chuckled. "Ain't that the truth."
"Can I ask you a question? Are you by chance related to the Arc family?" Sarah asked suddenly, having realised where she had heard this particular voice before.
"Can't say I've even heard of them." Felix paused. "Why do you ask?"
"It's just that you sound just like this guy I know Jaune Arc, he's a huntsmen in training and one of the few people from Beacon I can actually stand." She replied.
"Tell me about him." Felix flashed her a charming smile. "Is he as handsome and awesome as me?"
She rolled her eyes. "No, he's a completed dork, but to his credit he managed to get a girlfriend, in fact..." Sarah's eyes looked across the street to see the people they were just talking about. "That's them."
She pointed at the blonde and the small friend group he had across the street as they all stood outside The Ocular Vision, no doubt getting something to wear for the dance in two days.
"Huh." Was all Felix said as a grin slowly grew on his face. "Interesting." He watch them as they all entered the shop, his eyes focused on the group.
"Speaking of Beacon and stuff, would you mind if I ask you a question?" Felix asked, turning back to face Sarah.
"I might not be the most knowledgeable, but go ahead."
"You see, I've got this here letter for some students I met a small while ago and I want to use it to thank them, so do you know how to send some post to Beacon?" Felix asked.
"Well lucky you I had a friend in Beacon a few years ago so I can actually answer this for you, you see if you go to the post office and say it's for a Beacon student then they'll bring it up free of charge, and if you know the room number they'll bring it up to there." Sarah shared, happy her little niche of knowledge was useful for once.
"How long does this take?"
"About three days."
"Perfect." Felix grinned before grabbing his coffee and standing up. "Well Sarah this has been great, here's the money." He handed her three times the Lien his espresso had cost with a charming wink that caused her to blush. "Plus a little something extra for the information."
"Safe travels!" She called to him as he left, leaving her to think about the strange man.
The decision to heed Yang's words and take a break after a good nights sleep was one of the best decisions Blake had ever made.
Now that she could actually think clearly about everything has made her realise she may have taken the investigation a bit too far. and if she had continued to act like that she would have been nothing more than a liability and gotten her friends hurt like causing Yang to lose an arm or something like that.
And so, in a more proper state of mind, Blake decided to go to the dance after all.
The only real problem was that she had nothing to wear, but rather fortunately all of her friends were currently shopping at The Ocular Vision for similar purposes. So Blake could join them and possible apologise for her behaviour. Sounds easy right?
In theory it was, but in practice...
In practice she'd been standing outside for the last fifteen minutes trying to work up the courage to go in.
Sure on a purely academic level she knew that her friends would forgive her, but there was also a small doubt gnawing at her, that they wouldn't and that she'd already done too much damage. It was a very small doubt, but it was just big enough to make her hesitate.
Blake hated this cowardly side to herself that would sometimes appear, filling her with doubts and insecurities, causing her to fear getting close to people, Blake hated it. Sure it was getting better and less frequent, but still... it was there all the same. Blake honestly wished there was someone like her she could talk to, but she wasn't sure there was a single living person like that.
As such she had to sort this out on her own.
And so with as much resolve as she could must, Blake entered the store, and looked around for her friends, eventually finding Yang looking at some red dresses.
"Hey." Blake greeted, causing Yang to jump and turn around to face her.
"Blake! Great to see you you look...better." Yang greeted.
"All thanks to you." Blake told her.
"Does that mean..." yang trailed off.
Blake nodded. "Yes i'm going to the dance... but i'll need a dress first."
"Ahh, no problem." Yang said as she deposited some of the dresses to Ruby's Lopez robot which seemed to be already carrying a substantial amount of clothes from everyone else in the group.
"Fui diseñado para hacer la tarea, limpiar y bailar. sostener la ropa es un desperdicio de mis habilidades." Lopez said incomprehensibly.
[I was designed for doing homework, cleaning and dance. Holding clothes is a waste of my abilities.]
"But first I need your opinion on something." Yang continued with a mischievous grin appearing on her face. "Follow me."
Yang then lead Blake to the changing rooms and started to knock loudly on one of the closed stalls.
"You decent yet Rubes?" Yang called in.
"Yes I have the stupid dress on." Ruby called back, slightly muffled.
"Great! Now lets see it."
"But Yaaannnnngggg!"
"Hurry up before I just punch the door in." Yang threatened.
"Fine."
Slowly, the door to the changing room booth opened, revealing Ruby in a short, red, sleeveless dress with a thick black sash around the waist, the yoke of the dress was transparent mesh with an opaque collar and hem, as well as opaque lines connecting the collar to her shoulders.
It all had the effect of Blake thinking about how incredibly cute it made Ruby look, and summoning some, uh inappropriate thoughts she would never ever tell Yang about for fear of her own life.
"Looking good sis!" Yang approved. "What do you think Blake?"
"I like it." Blake said simply with a soft smile.
"B- Blake!?" Ruby spluttered. "W- what are you doing here?"
"Shopping for a dress." Blake explained. "I've decided to go to the dance after all."
A great big smile erupted out of Ruby's face. "That's great! And you uh like my dress?" She asked shyly.
"Yes, it makes you look even better than usual." Blake said with a smile.
"Yang i'm getting this one."
"You sure?" Yang pointed back they way they came. "I've got Lopez holding a few more options."
Ruby nodded sharply.
"Alright then, get changed and give it to Lopez then, and find us when your done." Yang told ruby before turning to Blake. "Alright Blakey, lets get one for you now."
"Great, my favourite part." Blake said sarcastically, causing Yang to roll her eyes.
"Come on, lets get this done before Weiss gets here and starts criticising our choices."
As they left, Blake's Faunus hearing couldn't help but pick up something Ruby said that made Blake smile.
"I can't believe it, this is going to be the best dance ever!"
It was half an hour before dawn when Locus begun his escape.
Having been awake for most of the previous day and feigning unconsciousness, Locus had heard about what the presumed chieftain had said about him and had quickly come to the conclusion that he needed to escape and assess the political situation of this world before going further.
As such when he felt ready enough, Locus quickly freed himself from the hospital restraints, got out of the stiff hospital bed and put on his armour, grateful that they had decided to keep it in the same room as him.
The same could not be said for his weapons.
"Unfortunate." He said aloud, but he was lucky that they had left his sword/key here, most likely because they were unsure of what exactly it was.
Now fully dressed and armed, Locus thought about his options for escape, taking into account his equipment, hindrances and knowledge of the new world he had found himself in.
His current room was bare, with not even a window so he had no idea of which floor he was on, and the only valuable information he could find was that he was in Menagerie General Hospital as evidenced by the logo on the bedding.
Still he now had an objective, avoid cameras, find a room with a window and scale down to escape.
Plan in mind, Locus slowly opened the room door towards himself just wide enough to see the single guard that had been posted outside his room.
A younger Locus wouldn't have hesitated to kill him, but now that he was older, wiser and had sworn off killing, Locus decided to distract him instead.
Throwing a small stone, it impacted the floor across the hospital hall, making a satisfying thunk, and attracting the guards attention.
As the guard went over to investigate the noise, Locus slide out of the room and silently snuck away.
Then as gracefully as a puma and as silently as a ghost, Locus practically glided through the corridors of the hospital, avoiding guards, doctors and cameras with practised ease from years of mercenary work.
Soon he came to the ideal room, a comma patient whose doctor had left and had a balcony window in their room.
From there he took a minute and began thinking about what to do next.
The first priority would be to find shelter, a place to serve as a makeshift 'base' while he figured out the rules of this new world.
His second priority would then be to find information; newspapers, over heard conversation and whatever passed for the internet would be his primary sources.
Then his final objective would be to recover the rest of his equipment and weapons. Granted his guns would quickly become obsolete unless this new world miraculously had the same ammo type he used. But what he really needed to recover was the teleportation grenades or 'future cubes' as Captain Grif once dubbed them. Locus had taken a small supply before he had left Chorus for good and they would be invaluable should he need to make a hasty retreat. That also doubled for his cloaking enhancement that was also missing from his armour.
Priority's set and goals in mind, Locus began scaling down the hospital, and by time they would realise he was gone he would be dust in the wind.
Notes:
And that's the end of that chapter.
First up we had Felix doing some stalking and delivering some totally not suspicious mail. the name of the OC here was a reference to the character of the same name from Terminator.
I briefly considered writing about Yang and Blake's talk, but ultimately decided against it because it would just be the exact same as cannon with no real changes.
As always thanks everyone for reading and extra thanks to those who comment/review you guys are the best!
Next time General Ironwood revives an interesting report, Ruby finally asks Blake to the dance and more! but till then, i'll catch ya'll on the flip flop.
review replies:
Momentei: Thanks dude! you stay Groovy as well!
Anonamous Elephant: can't wait to see more of Locus huh? then i think you'll like the small bit at the end of this chapter. and you make a good point about the meta, and rest assured everything is well in hand.
Brain.H.H: glad to see you enjoyed the chapter, and to answer your question more than enough to do some damage.
Olav152: an interesting idea, and defiantly not without merit.
ReaderWarrior: I appreciate it dude, if i need help, I won't hesitate to ask.