Author's Note: Well, here it is! Chapter 3. Posting it in before this category 4 almost 5 hurricane comes over and wrecks the East Coast (which, I'm about 3 hours from the coast, so... yay...). Anyway, I'm super excited to post this one. I'm glad that you all have enjoyed it so far as far as I've seen. This has been the best opening 2 weeks (in terms of follows, favorites, and reviews) I've had really ever upon posting a new story, so I'm really excited. I'm hope you all are excited too, because here, my friends, is where the real story begins.
"What are you doing?" Ruby…
"I'm sorry!" the young huntress-in-training yelps out. It takes me a few seconds to orient myself with the current situation. This… This is what happened years ago. My head starts the hurt when I think about it, so I just don't. Then I remember the entire reason for coming back: Ruby. My eyes look her over, and I can't help but smile. She's just how I remember her. She's just as beautiful as I remember her as well; her short, red-tipped hair falling right in front of those beautiful silver orbs that are her eyes. Those same silver eyes looking up at me with confusion and concern. I stare at her, entranced for a few seconds before I shake myself out of the almost trance-like state I seemed to have fallen into. Hopefully she didn't notice. I shake my head before looking at her again. This is real. I'm really here. This isn't a dream.
Recalling how this went the first time, I make a promise to myself not to treat Ruby as poorly as I did before. After all, I've been given another chance at love. I can't mess it up again. Not after what Yang did for me. She still should have come. Regardless, I'm still grateful. This is the best gift anyone could have ever given me.
"It's okay, d-don't worry about it. A-accidents happen." I manage to get out from the nervousness that suddenly falls upon me, a light burning of my cheeks making it clear that I'm blushing. I guess I'm a lot more nervous than I thought. I offer my hand to help her up. She takes it.
As she grabs my hand, we make eye contact. The sudden feeling of Ruby's touch along with those beautiful silver eyes piercing into my soul sends electricity through me. It's a struggle to maintain the eye contact, but I push through the nervous jubilancy and keep my eyes locked onto hers, but not in a creepy way.
"Are you okay?" Ruby asks me, her face painted with concern.
"Yes, I'm okay, R-" I stop myself before I say her name, cursing to myself silently. You're not supposed to know her name yet, you dolt. "Yes, I'm okay," I repeat, a slight smile on my face. Not large enough for Ruby to notice, but enough for me to. This is really happening.
"Well okay then! My name is Ruby. It's nice to meet you…?" She trails off, trying to get me to finish the sentence for her. She's already back to her cheery self that won me over the first time. Her smile radiating this sheer happiness to everyone lucky enough to be in her immediate vicinity.
"Weiss. My name is Weiss Schnee." I say, smiling. My heart is beating so fast. I think I'm going to explode.
Another voice enters the conversation. "Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, one of the largest producers of energy propellant in the world." A dark haired girl with a bow on walks up to us. It's hard to forget who she is. Blake.
"Yes, that's me." I say nervously, vaguely remembering how this conversation went before. Maybe this time, I can make our start better too. I don't want to show hatred towards her, she doesn't deserve it. I can fix this wrong too.
"This same company infamous for its controversial labor forces and questionable business partners."
I smile and laugh awkwardly, realizing she's right. Then I remember all of the changes that I made to the company as soon as I took over back in my time, and my awkward smile changes to an actual one."Well, to be fair, the company isn't being run by me yet. I think that when it is run by me, there will be some much needed changes." I say. Blake nods and hands me a vial of dust. One of the suitcases must have come unlocked when Ruby fell on them.
After handing me the vial, Blake turns around. "See you around," she says before walking away, leaving me with Ruby again. I take the opportunity to look at her again. It's been so long since I've seen her. Three weeks. It feels like forever ago. She's so beautiful, even though she doesn't try to be. I missed you so much, Ruby.
"Weiss?" Ruby's voice interrupts my thoughts.
"Yes, Ruby?"
"Do you know where we go from here? I'm… I'm kinda lost, and my sister ditched me earlier." Ruby blushes at the admission of being lost. She scrapes her boot on the ground, further showing that embarrassment that she must feel because of it.
"I… think I know where to go," I say, smiling. "Here, follow me." I turn around and start walking towards the main foyer of Beacon, where Ozpin is about to give his speech. We have to push our way through the crowd that's forming out in front of the school. As we push forward, we pass a few familiar faces. Cardin, Pyrrha, Ren and Nora, even Jaune are waiting to get in around us. I look around and see the pillars that adorn the front of Beacon. Architecture I haven't seen in years. Everything is swirling around in my head. The realization that I can keep Ruby safe, the realization that it's really happening, and the realization that this is my new life among a few of the things that are populating my thoughts.
Upon entering, Yang sees Ruby and waves her over to her. "Ruby! I saved you a spot!" She yells over the crowd. Ruby smiles and starts walking over to her sister. Not knowing what to do, I stay there, standing where Ruby left me. Much to my chagrin, Ruby doesn't wave me over to be by her. My head sinks a little bit. Calm down, Weiss. She's only just met you. She's not going to call you over there. It's going to be okay. You're not going to make her fall for you in a day. You didn't fall for her in a day, remember that. She probably just got excited about Yang and forgot I was here. Yang. I'll make things different with her too. She cares about Ruby a lot. And Ruby is going to go through some rough times. I'll be there for Ruby of course, but also for Yang, since that's going to hit her pretty hard as well.
I walk over to them, careful not to interrupt any conversation they're having. It's not bad to be more approachable, right? Right. This is fine, as long as I don't interrupt them
"And then there was this really nice girl named Weiss that, even though I tripped and fell on her stuff, she helped me up!" I hear Ruby say while I'm walking closer. Then she leans in close to Yang and whispers. Luckily, she's not very good at whispering, and I'm also fairly close to them by now. I don't hear everything, but what I can make out is: "Plus, …. pretty."
I blush, and my heart skips a beat. Could she be talking about me?
"Awww does my little sis have a little crush?" Yang teases, somewhat loudly. Ruby blushes a slight shade of crimson and whispers back harshly.
I think she might be.
"Yang! W-what gave you that idea?" Ruby stutters, obviously flustered.
"Nothing," she says, looking away in another direction.
I laugh nervously as I approach the two of them. I'm a bit nervous to approach them after what I just heard, but it's what I have to do so I can get myself closer to them, specifically to Ruby.
"Weiss?!" Ruby asks, somewhat on edge with my sudden appearance.
"Hi again, Ruby. I assume that this is your sister?" I ask motioning to Yang. Man, it's going to be so hard pretending to not know anything about them. Definitely not something I'm used to.
"Yeah, how did you know?" Ruby asks.
Gotta play it cool. "You two just kind of give off the feeling that you're siblings." Nailed it.
"Oh, well yeah, we're sisters. We-" Ruby starts, but is cut off by a loud voice.
"Ahem" Professor Ozpin starts, speaking into the microphone. The body of new students gets quiet as Ozpin speaks. Just as eloquent as ever. I think to myself. I roll my eyes, remembering what was said the first time I heard this. Disinterested with the whole scenario, I turn my attention to looking around again. I'm able to pick out a few people I remember in the crowd during the speech.
And then it ends, leaving the students to their devices for the night. Ruby and Yang both ask me to move my sleeping situation closer to them since we're friends now. The thought makes me smile. Friends. I fall asleep with that stupid smile on my face, and Ruby on my mind.
As I fall asleep, my eyes open again, except… I'm not awake. My mind starts to play a memory, one I've had ingrained into my mind since it forest in front of us calm. We had been assigned to take out a small group of Geists. Nothing too difficult. Ruby and I had been assigned this task. We were confident in our abilities, so we took it. We looked for about three hours before we found any of the Geists. They were in a large clearing out in the middle of the forest, and so the encounter started. Ruby and I made quick work of the first one that we fought, taking minimal aura damage. It was looking like another easy job. The other two Geists started acting more defensively than offensively. The first one was focused entirely on offense, which is why it fell so quickly.
"Ruby, they're acting smarter." I said, looking for an opening.
"I know, but I think I have a plan." I trusted her plan. We backed off and prepared. I would set up glyphs all around the two Grimm, and Ruby would use her semblance to quickly strike off all of the possessed limbs they had acquired before I came in and dealt the final blows.
"You ready, Ruby?"
"Of course, Weiss. Let's do this." And just like that, the plan started taking shape. Glyphs surrounded the Grimm, and Ruby went to it, slicing through the limbs like the Grim Reaper sliced through the bodies of those marked for death. She wasn't nicknamed the Red Reaper for nothing, after all. And then right as she was about to cut through the last of the arms, the Grimm hit her with it. The unforeseen variable was of course the Grimm, but we both thought Ruby would be too fast for them to predict any of her movements. It turns out we were wrong. The blow knocked out a good chunk of Ruby's aura and sent her slamming into a tree. I immediately rushed over to protect her before the Grimm could follow up. Standing in between Ruby and the Grimm, I summon a glyph to keep it away from us.
It responded by slamming its remaining rock limb into the glyph over and over. The glyph was waning, and I was fully prepared to counterattack after it broke. But I didn't account for Ruby jumping in front of me as it did, taking another direct hit.
It was almost in slow motion how it happened. The attack reduced the rest of Ruby's aura to nothing, sending her flying directly into another tree. Except she didn't it the trunk. As she was sent flying, she impacted with a branch… and didn't stop. As she kept going, the branch pushed itself through her body, impaling Ruby there.
Color drained from Ruby's face, and blood gushed from the wound, the branch coated in red as it emerged from her abdomen.
"RUBY!" I yell, waking myself up from my sleep. It was morning. I sit up and feel a few tears fall down. Apparently I was crying in my sleep, and the tears were pooling on my face. That was the worst it's been in two weeks… My heart is beating like a madman.
After wiping my eyes of the tears, I take a look around. A few people are glaring at me, which is understandable seeing as I just woke them up screaming. I turn my head again, and Ruby is looking at me, concern in her eyes.
"Weiss, are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?" Ruby asks. I swallow the lump in my throat and respond.
"Yeah, Ruby… it was… it was just a nightmare. I'm… I'm fine." I wipe away another tear from my eyes.
"Well, if you need to talk about it to feel better, you can talk to me." Ruby smiles. If only I could, Ruby. If only I could. I give a weak smile back.
"Thank you, Ruby." She smiles again and gets up, getting ready for the day.
We all get up together and eat a quick breakfast, Ruby eyeing me with concern after having screamed myself awake, and with her name no less. The meal passes in relative silence, everyone tense about the initiation that will be upon us soon. I myself am tense for a completely different reason. While everyone else is tense because they don't know what's about to happen, my anxiety comes to a head because I'm thinking about my partner. I need to be partners with Ruby again. I don't know what would happen if I'm not. I can't imagine being on a team that Ruby isn't on. That's the main reason I'm here, to be with Ruby. If I'm not with her, I don't know what's going to happen to her or myself.
After breakfast, we all start heading over to the cliffs outside of Beacon for our initiation. As the sunlight hits us, Ruby stretches, energized by the warmth of the sun. Ruby always was a morning person.
We line up on our little launch pads and get ready. Ozpin greets us, and as he's talking people to the left of me start getting launched. My turn gets steadily closer, and after a few seconds, it arrives. I brace myself against the launch pad and use its momentum to push myself off of it as it launches me.
After being launched, I prepare to land, using my glyphs for safety. That's the easy part and the least of my worries. My main concern is finding Ruby, as that's not a guarantee. Think, Weiss. What can you do to make sure you're with Ruby? You could search for her specifically and not make eye contact with anyone else. No, that might not work. What if I walk right past her without realizing it? Well, maybe if you just do what you did last time, she'll find you. Now, what did I do last time? I think I just stayed here…?
Just as I begin my musings, I hear footsteps behind me. Turning around, I see exactly what I wanted: Ruby's form running towards me.
Blue meets silver.
"Weiss…" Ruby says, looking at me.
"Hello, Ruby."