"Excuse me, miss Nikos, there's some visitors here to see you, would you like us to let them in?"
Pyrrha didn't look at the nurse, but gave a silent nod of approval.
It was better than speaking, at this point her voice was very much hoarse and she didn't feel much like speaking.
A few moments later, she heard steps, footsteps.
"Pyrrha?"
She flinched back from the unfortunately familiar voice as a memory rushed to the forefront of her mind-
"Now that is a lot of blood! Makes everything harder to see actually, so would you mind not bleeding for a bit? Thanks doll face." Felix moved the knife and Pyrrha barely stopped herself from screaming.
"Now this is going to hurt, so please feel free to scream, it really helps with motivation."
He moved the knife and Pyrrha could feel the dark of unconsciousness begin to take her-
"Pyrrha! Are you okay?"
She snapped back into reality to see Jaune's concerned face take up her vision.
"Fine." Pyrrha lied tiredly. "Just... fine."
She tried to force a smile, but found she couldn't even force a half smile.
Jaune frowned but didn't call her out on the lie.
"So, how's the hospital been treating you, are the staff nice?" He asked instead.
"The hospitals fine, and yes the staff are lovely." Pyrrha replied somewhat flatly.
Jaune winced at the flat tone in her voice. "You don't sound too happy."
"I'm not."
"Do, you want to talk about it?" Jaune asked as he sat at the chair next to her.
It was just the two of them at the moment, Ruby, Yang and Blake had all visited her earlier and Pyrrha had given them the same short blank answers to the questions they asked.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, Jaune not sure of what to say, and Pyrrha unwilling to properly start a conversation.
It would be a while before another word would be spoken.
Pyrrha just rested there, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, thoughts swirling around in her brain like a slow mixture of soup.
But Pyrrha didn't mind so much, it was no fault of Jaune's really, but when she heard his voice memoires of him, would come to the surface.
Memories of that awful night would come to the forefront of Pyrrha's mind and make her want to scream, or cry or something.
But he was silent bless him, poor sweet Jaune.
But after two full hours of the oppressive yet comforting silence, Pyrrha decided to speak.
"I can feel it."
"What?" Jaune asked, clearly surprised that the silence had been broken.
"My leg." She clarified. "I can still feel my leg, the one I lost. It's feel like it's still there sometimes, like I can still use it, walk, run and train with it." Pyrrha gave a hallow laugh. "It's maddening."
"Pyrrha-" Jaune tried to interject, but she wasn't quite finished.
"They told me it's called phantom limbs and pain. But I don't really feel any pain just the limb, just the leg." Pyrrha rambled. "And, just can't look at, because if I look at it it's gone, but if I don't then it's still there because I can feel it, you know?"
"I'm sorry Pyrrha." Jaune said sincerely.
"Don't be, it's not your fault." Pyrrha replied softly.
"But hey at least general Ironwoods getting you a new leg."
"I heard."
"It's supposed to be state of the art, best in Atlas tech." Jaune said in an attempt to cheer her up.
"I know... but it won't be the same."
"Pyrrha, I heard what happened from Ruby and the others, is it true that this Felix guy... he sounds like me?" Jaune asked carefully.
"Yes." Pyrrha nodded almost robotically. "It's true, he sounds almost exactly like you." Then Pyrrha gave a half laugh. "Dear lord he used that against me you know, he used your voice to trick me, and trap me. What's the point of being the 'invincible' girl if I'm tricked by that?"
Then the tears came, first one then it was a waterfall of tears. "He hurt me, I could have died, and now nothing will be the same again."
Jaune then put Pyrrha into a big, comforting hug.
"Jaune? Everything is not fine."
Elsewhere, away in Beacon, Ruby Rose was taking stock of the situation.
The rush of events after the battle had finally cooled down and a bittersweet feeling was the concusses.
On one hand, the bad guys had been beaten, Torchwick was in jail and whatever masterplan they had was in ruins, the Meta itself had been forced to retreat. But on the other hand, Pyrrha was hurt badly and had lost a leg, Qrow had been put in hospital, Felix was still out there and the White Fang could still be up to something.
And even outside that faithful mission, lots of things had changed.
Wash's mental breakdown inside her had hurt her mentally and she knew at heart that it would effect her for years to come.
She'd managed to start a relationship with Blake, even if they'd only had one date together.
Yang and everyone else had gotten really worried by Ruby's behaviour and had tried to stage an intervention for her, ending with Ruby spilling the beans about the blues and red, promising proof in the near future.
All in all, things were changing and Ruby had no idea what would happen next.
Still, if nothing else she had her friends and family to help her through it.
Right now Ruby was looking out into the city from Beacon, she'd ditched the guys to be alone with her thoughts.
"It's a nice view."
Ruby didn't look away from it as Blake came over and sat down next to her on the bench, looking at the view of Vale from Beacon.
"It is." Ruby agreed.
It was a pretty good view, the evening sun was dipping behind the city which had silhouetted it in a spectacular fashion.
"So, how's things?" Blake asked.
"Good, good, just thinking."
"What about?"
"About everything that's happened recently, I was hoping to visit Pyrrha tomorrow, to see how she's doing."
"Would you mind if I tagged along?" Blake asked.
"Of course! I'm sure that Pyrrha would like the company." Ruby then remembered something. "Oh! How did things go with your family?"
"Good, they went really good." Blake smiled wildly. "Better than I expected actually. Their staying here for a week or so before they have to head home."
Ruby nodded. "That's good."
"Yeah, hey I could take you to meet them if you'd like, they actually want to meet the whole team, but with Pyrrha out of action it would just be me you and Yang." Blake explained, twisting her hair with a finger as she did so. "And maybe afterwards we could go catch a movie or something."
Ruby smiled. "That sounds great. It'll be a nice change of pace from everything that's been happening."
"It will." Blake said as her hand found Ruby's and their fingers intertwined, they sat there watching the sunset.
After a while Blake asked a question.
"Do you ever wonder why we're here?"
"It is one of life's great mysteries." Ruby replied. "But I don't think it matters, all that matters is what we do with our life, not why we're here."
"I agree." Blake said. "Come on, lets head inside, it's getting cold."
"You go ahead, I'd like to watch the sun set for a while longer." Ruby said.
"Of course." Blake said, and leaned over to give Ruby a kiss on the cheek. "See you in a few."
Felix winced as the doctor finished wrapping the bandages around him.
"Hey, be a bit more careful could you?" Felix snapped at him.
"Sorry sir." The medic apologised. "She wanted to see you when we were finished."
"No rest for the wicked." Felix mused aloud as the medic left. Carefully he then put on his armour, even if it was still in a poor condition due to little red riding hood packing a bigger punch than expected. Still, at least he had fun with Carolina 2.0.
Armour fully on, he walked out of the tent they'd been keeping him in and walked across the field to the command centre.
Currently they were located in a field several dozen miles away from Vale and concealed from watching eyes by being just on the outskirts of a particularly thick forest.
It was a tightly run operation, but Felix could see several security errors as he walked from one end to the other, hell those were some errors that Locus would complain about but ultimately exploit if he wanted to infiltrate the place.
Felix reached the command tent and stepped inside, there was only one person there, a guy wearing a mask with deep red hair. Felix had seen him around before, but never bothered to learn the dudes name.
"So your finally here." The guy said.
"Yes, good to see that your little mask doesn't stop your vision." Felix said as he held out his hand. "Felix."
"Adam." He replied but didn't take Felix's hand. Rude.
"Well at least you have a normal name." Felix said before moving onto business. "So the boss lady wants to talk?"
Adam nodded and pressed a button on the table he was leaning on causing a hologram of Cinder to appear in the middle of the table.
"Cinder!" Felix greeted loudly. "How's you doing doll face?"
"Quite well." Cinder replied smoothly. "How about you? How are you recovering from your injuries?"
"Oh you know, as well as I can." Felix replied nonchalantly.
Ignoring the small talk, Adam went right to business.
"There are rumblings of discontent within the ranks after the disaster at Vale last week." He announced.
"And I'm assuming you silenced them." Cinder guessed.
"Of course." Adam confirmed. "But that doesn't change the fact that what happened last week was a mess."
"Don't you mean a trainwreck?" Felix said dryly. "Come on, sure some of our guys might have gotten their asses kicked, and sure it's earlier than planned, but we still achieved the main objective."
"Barely." Sneered Adam.
"Relax Adam, Felix is right about this, while there may have been complications, the overall plan went swimmingly." Cinder said.
"That may be so, but we cannot allow for many more mistakes. If there are, then my soldiers may get restless."
"Regardless, there is something I need you to look into Adam." Cinder moved her hand and a new image appeared. "I need you to find this individual."
Felix whistled as the image appeared, it seems that the unknown hostile that showed up during the battle was the freaking Meta.
"The unknown hostile from the battle." Adam frowned. "Why?"
"Because as far as any of my sources know, he doesn't exist." Cinder explained. "He is a complete unknown."
"I'll get on it."
Felix interrupted. "Yeah, if I'm to be going after this guy, then I'd like to be paid in advance."
"Mercenary scum." Adam sneered.
"I wouldn't knock it till you try it. Better than working yourself silly for some revolution."
"Some silly revolution?! Our cause is just! We work to-" Adam started, full of outrage but Felix interrupted.
"Give equality to the Faunus, bla, bla, bla." Felix mocked. "Our cause is noble, bla, bla, bla. We are the good guys even if we are the ones that blow up buildings and kill civilians-"
Adam cut Felix off with an inhuman growl, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Human scum."
"And proud of it." Felix grinned under his helmet. "Seriously though, I'd like to be paid for the last job and in advance for the next if you want me to look for-" Felix nodded in the direction of the image. "That guy."
No need to let them know that it was the Meta of course, if they wanted that information they could pay for it.
"Of course, your payment will be transferred to your account as promised." Cinder said smoothly. "However, you will not be apart of the team hunting this unknown."
"Oh?" Felix raised an eyebrow as Cinder actually looked concerned for once.
"Yes, an airship will be with you shortly, my master wishes to meet you in person."
After Blake left Ruby continued to sit around for a full hour before she decided to head back to the room.
The walk back was nice and peaceful, Beacon always looked pretty at this time of night and it was only a little cold.
Her only real complaint was that she was a little hungry after accidentally missing dinner. Eh, she'd get a snack in the dorm.
Ruby entered the building and quickly made her way up to the dorm room, and entered...
...Only to find professor Ozpin standing in the centre of the room.
Yang, Blake, Church, Wash, Sarge, Caboose and Tex were also there, all standing around awkwardly and looked like they'd been waiting for her.
"Hey guys, what's going on?" Ruby asked warily.
"He knows." Wash said and Ruby only had a few seconds to look surprised before Ozpin opened his mouth.
"Miss Rose, we've been waiting for you, please take a seat." He gestured.
Ruby elected to take one of the desk chairs, Yang was sitting on her bed while Tex and Blake leaned against the walls and bedframe respectively.
Once she'd been seated Ozpin began speaking.
"Now I'm sure that you're all wondering why exactly I'm here right now. Well to be blunt I'm here about the 'intervention' that took place just before you all left on your mission."
All involved in said intervention glanced at each other.
"Now there are very few times in which I have ever been truly surprised." Ozpin continued on. "But your claims of seeing people from a different universe is one of them."
"Excuse me, professor?" Blake interrupted. "But how did you hear about this?"
"That is not important." Ozpin claimed. "But this news, well... I needed to see it for myself. And if I recall correctly, Ruby promised proof of her claims after the mission was over."
"Alright, sure." Ruby said anxiously. "Uh, Church would you mind...?"
"Right, right. I've gotcha covered kid." Church said.
Tex piped up. "You know, if it helps, I can verify that everything the kid is saying is true."
Ozpin gave a neutral hum as they all tensely waited for Church to make his move.
Then he did it, walking over to Yang and then he made the jump, she briefly made a noise, went limp and then bolted upright again.
"Woah! Dear lord is this what being a girl is like?" Church's voice came from Yang's body, which was a supremely weird experience.
"Yang are you..." Blake trailed off.
"Oh no, I'm Church, pleased to meet you." He (she?) held out a hand to shake which Blake carefully did.
"So you are one of the soldiers then?" Ozpin asked curiously.
"Yep, Leonard Church, pleased to meet you and let me just say it's really weird that Wash's voice come out of some old mans body."
"And am I to assume we share a similar voice?"
"It is weird hearing my own voice." Wash said.
"Harder to tell which one of you is talking." Sarge chipped in.
Tex snorted. "I can here the difference, ones a distinguished headmaster of a school, and the others the same rookie that got yelled at for skateboarding in the halls."
"That was one time." Wash complained.
Ignoring this exchange Ozpin asked yet another question. "What exactly are you?"
"Well, I can't exactly speak for the rest of those idiots, but I am a motherfucking ghost."
"And how did you come to be in this place?"
"Well, that is a long story." Church said.
"I thought as much, you may leave miss Xiao Long now."
And Church did, Yang went limp and then shot back up, looking around wildly. "What happened?"
""You were possessed, I'll show you latter, I recorded the whole thing on my scroll." Blake informed her partner.
"With that out of the way, I'd like to invite you all to a meeting that will be taking place at 8AM tomorrow morning," Ozpin offered. "The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss everything related to this situation."
"Who'll be there?" Ruby asked.
"Qrow, general Ironwood, Miss Polendina, Team SALN and myself will all be in attendance." Ozpin counted them off. "I have also arranged for miss Nikos to be briefly discharged from the hospital so that she may also present for proceedings."
"Alright, we'll be there." Ruby said with a nod.
"Yeah you can count on me too." Tex confirmed.
"Excellent, I'll see you all tomorrow then."
With that Ozpin left, Tex shortly after.
Ruby wordlessly got up and went over to get some cookies to eat before bed.
Tomorrow would be a long day.
Notes:
And that's the end of that chapter.
Well the ball is rolling now, in terms of notes there isn't much to say other that Oz found out about the blues and red through listening devices in case you missed it two chapters ago.
As always I'd like to thank everyone for reading and give extra thanks to those that comment/review, you guys are great.
Next time the truth is fully reveal and everything changes, but till then I'll catch ya'll on the flip flop.
Review replies:
Annonamous Elephant: Good to see your enjoying it, and the plot is going to become thicker still.
ReaderWarrior: That is a good idea, I might just steal it for a future chapter, thanks!
: They would cause some chaos if that happened.