Hey, look! Hornet's on time for once!
Wait… no, I'm not. Shit! A day late and a dollar short yet again.
Chapter 3
Ruby placed three plates down on her kitchen table as she joined Yang and Weiss. Having closed down the bakery for the day, she had invited the two of them up to her apartment to talk. The weird guy from earlier was probably nothing. Maybe he was having an off day and was a little awkward as a result. Or he could have just been a quiet person. Whatever the case, there was no reason to suspect him of any of the million different things that were racing through her mind.
Cracking open her can of soda, Yang kicked off the conversation. "So, you wanna tell us what that was downstairs? You looked pretty spooked by that dude."
"I agree," Weiss nodded along, "Did he do something to make you feel threatened?"
Ruby shook her head as she bit into a cookie from her own personal stash. "Mmph… No, not really," she said. "He just came in and walked up to the counter. He asked if I owned the place, I said, 'yeah.' Then you guys got here."
"What had you so freaked out, then?" Yang raised an eyebrow.
"It was just a feeling I got. You know?" The moment he had walked in, Ruby recalled a chill running up her spine. And when he'd locked eyes with her and asked her name… something about it just didn't sit right with her. "I mean, you saw how big the guy was, right? And the way he didn't really say anything, it was odd, I guess."
"Huntsmen often seem that way to civilians," Weiss agreed.
"He was a huntsman? How could you tell?"
With a sigh, the white-haired woman leaned back in her chair. "I forget it's not so easy to tell for no-hunters." She glanced between Ruby and Yang. "It's in the way he carried himself. How he kept shooting subtle glances to Yang and me, and how he tensed when we did."
"Even between you two," she continued, gesturing to the sisters, "I can see that Yang is prepared to jump up and fight at a moment's notice. You, on the other hand, are relaxed. You don't anticipate any sort of danger."
Yang placed a hand on hers and smirked. "It's nothing against you, Rubes. We've just been trained to expect a fight to come from anywhere. Same could probably be said about tall, dark, and muscly earlier."
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief after a moment of pondering. What they were saying made sense. So, there most likely wasn't anything to worry about. He was just a huntsman and was just weird because of that. She nodded. "Yeah, I get it. So, he was like you guys."
"He probably had a few years on us, but sure, let's go with that."
Now that whole thing had been dealt with, and Ruby's mind was put at ease, for the most part, she was able to focus on what really mattered. "Okay, so Weiss," she said, lifting a glass of milk to her lips. "I didn't know you were in town too. I guess that means Blake's here as well?"
The Schnee shook her head. "No, not yet. She's on her way, though. Blake's actually been in Menagerie for a while now, visiting her parents. When we decided to take a break, she was on a flight there faster than you could say 'tuna.'"
"When she gets back, we're gonna spend some time here and in Vale before we head back into the field. Kitty-kat's just draggin' her feet." Yang kicked her feet up onto the table, something Ruby personally didn't mind, as she was guilty of it herself.
Weiss, however, seemed less than impressed by the act. Raising her brow, she said, "To be fair, she hasn't seen them in a year. Not since that job we did in Kuo Kuana with your uncle." She then lightly shoved the woman's legs off the surface.
The brawler laughed and held her hands up. "I'm kidding. You know I'm kidding." She looked at Ruby, jerking her thumb in Weiss's direction. "She knows I'm kidding."
Ruby looked at her sister with a mix of concern and confusion. "Oookay?"
"Speakin' of the frisky feline," the possibly-insane-huntress went on like nothing. "That's actually part of why we came down here."
She fished around in her jacket pocket for a few seconds, eventually retrieving a small, hastily scribbled list on a notecard. It listed several different pastries and sweets, as well as one main cake. "An order?" Ruby asked.
"Yup," Yang smiled, popping the 'p.' "Blake's B-Day is tomorrow, and we were wondering if you'd be interested in baking a couple things for the party."
"You would be compensated for your work, of course," Weiss added quickly. "We don't expect something for nothing."
That was… Ruby honestly wasn't expecting that. Yang often had the pick of her creations if she wanted it. Whenever she came by, Ruby would send her away with a bag or box of her little treasures. It was just what she did for family and close friends. Dad got fresh bread once or twice a week. Even uncle Qrow - who notoriously hated sweet things - commonly wound up in possession of a baker's dozen of something.
But Ruby had never once expected that family paid her for her craft. It just wasn't anything she'd even considered. She didn't pay them for protecting her from Grimm as hunters. So why shouldn't she let a few things go for free? Then again, they'd never offered before either. Which made her family sound like a bunch of selfish jerks in retrospect, but she didn't see it that way. The things she gave them were gifts. Nothing more, nothing less.
"So… you want me to bake a cake for Blake's birthday?" she said.
"And cookies," Yang nodded. "Oh! And some of those double chocolate brownies! Those are for me, though." Yeah, those were awesome, Ruby recalled the first time she made them. She and Yang had eaten the whole batch in about ten minutes. Then promptly gotten tangled up in a race to the toilet and ending up vomiting all over each other. It was so worth it, though.
"Alright," Ruby nodded, "I can do that. Do you two have any idea what kind of cake Blake wants?"
Weiss and Yang looked at each other, then back to her. "Eh, not really," Yang admitted, her face scrunching up. "See, she… kinda doesn't know the party's happening at all."
Ruby blinked. Then a hand came up to rub her face. "Okay then," she groaned. "Do you know what she likes?"
"Fish."
"Fish?"
Yang nodded. "Yeah. Blake likes fish. As for a cake, well…" she paused, seemingly in deep thought. Seriously?! How could you want to commission a cake, but not know what that cake was? "She's not real big into sweets. So maybe something dark chocolate without a whole lot of sugar?"
Okay, Ruby thought. I can do that. Then again, she said Blake didn't eat sweet stuff. So, she might not even care about the cake at all. "Anything else? Anything you want the cake to say?"
It was Weiss who spoke up this time, quickly cutting Yang off for some reason. "No, no text, but if you could, decorate it to bear her emblem in frosting, I think she'd enjoy that." For reference, she held up her scroll, showing Ruby an image of Blake's black flame symbol.
Over the next few minutes, Ruby grilled them for notes on what else she needed to do. There wasn't much, other than the two-dozen cat-eared sugar cookies and Yang's request - no, demand - for brownies.
As she was busy jotting down notes into her scroll, she didn't notice the silent argument that the other two women were having. Which consisted of Yang furiously nodding and smiling devilishly, and Weiss shaking her head with just as much intensity.
"Actually, Rubes, there is one more thing you could do to the cake…"
Ruby looked up to see Weiss scowling. "Yang, no," the white-haired huntress said.
"C'mon, Weiss-cream, it'll be funny as hell!" she begged.
"We are not giving Blake a cake in the shape of a penis!"
A bead of sweat dripped from Ruby's forehead and ran down her nose. The ovens she used, while undoubtedly useful, had a tendency to heat the kitchen up to hellish temperatures. It didn't help that her air conditioner had chosen today to puke out and die. Things could have been going better.
After Weiss and Yang had left, Ruby had started work on their order almost immediately. She was kinda miffed by the fact that Blake's party was in a day, and they had waited until the last possible moment to contact her. As such, she was feverishly working away in her kitchen. What had always been a labor of love was now a frustrating slog through flour, sugar, and eggs.
Plus, everything else she had strewn out over her workstation.
It was as she vigorously whisked at a bowl of batter, that Ruby heard a loud crash outside. With a jump and a somewhat girly yelp, she practically flung the dish, its gooey contents, and then the whisk off the counter.
She cursed. "Argh! What now?"
The noise came once again. This time, louder and closer. Coming from the back alley of her building, it sounded like some big animal or person shoving trashcans around. With a groan, Ruby stomped to the exit, prepared to scream at some wily raccoons or something. It would do her some good. She needed to let off some steam. Despite Yang and Weiss's suspicions that the weird dude from earlier was just a socially awkward huntsman, Ruby was still a little on edge. It showed as she kept jumping at every single noise and shadow.
The door creaked open, giving way to a darkened alley. Brick walls towered up on both sides, the bases of which were lined with several garbage bins and a dumpster. Sure enough, true to the noises she'd heard, two of them were overturned next to her door. The sun was just beginning to set, however, with the structures in the way, the passageway was already very dim. On the plus side, it was way cooler out here than inside, with the ovens and stove running.
"Hello?" she called, stepping out into the shadows.
Near the end of the alley, a stray cat hissed and darted out from under some boxes, having been spooked by something. Every fiber of Ruby's being was screaming at her to take her own advice, now that she clearly was in a horror movie. It was common sense not to go investigate the strange noises coming from outside your door at night. Nine times out of ten, there was a silent killer in a mask waiting to pin you to a wall with a butcher's knife through the chest. That, or it was your doofy boyfriend, who would eventually reveal himself to be said psycho. However, since she currently lacked in the significant other department, it was most likely the former.
And yet, here she was anyway, stood like an idiot in the middle of her back alley. All doe-eyed and adorable, just begging for a machete to the forehead.
"You know, pipsqueak, for such a small thing, you sure go through a shit-ton of trash."
The scream that tore from Ruby's lips was so loud, the cat from a second ago made another mad dash out the alley. Self-preservation kicked into overdrive, and she made to run. "Whoa, where d'you think you're off to?" the monster taunted as he grabbed her by the shoulder, and he was strong. So much she stayed rooted in his grip, while her legs flew in the opposite direction. Which, in turn, caused her to lose all control of her body and fall backward.
Her eyes fused shut. If she was going to be murdered, she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing the fear in her face.
Only death didn't come.
She waited a moment… Nope, nothing.
Ruby dared to crack one eye open ever so slightly, fully expecting to see the glowing red eyes of a demon or something.
What she saw instead… Well, she was right on one thing - the orbs in her killer's face were indeed red, but they weren't glowing with ethereal hatred. Nor was it the mask of a slasher looking back at her with an amused yet concerned expression.
"You doin' okay there, kiddo?" her sarcastic, irresponsible, perverted, alcoholic, huntsman of an uncle rasped.
"Uncle Qrow?! Ugh, don't sneak up on me like that!" she shouted from the ground.
He raised his hands defensively. "Hey, all I did was make a comment on my niece producing a lot of garbage for living alone. You're the one who started screaming bloody murder and tried to run away like a nutcase."
Ruby groaned as she dragged herself up and dusted off her clothes. She didn't fail to note how he hadn't even lifted a finger to help her. "Well, I wouldn't have if some creep hadn't jumped out at me in a dark alley." Her eyes rolled at his blatantly unapologetic shrug. "What're you even doing back here?"
The two of them made their way back inside. Instantly, the heat of the room hit her, Qrow didn't seem too affected by it, though. Maybe the excessive consumption of booze had damaged some of his nerve-ending over the years.
"I knocked out front, but I didn't think you heard, so I decided to try the back," he explained quickly. "Guess my eyesight's not what it used to be; tripped over your trashcans in the dark."
Ruby might have actually believed him, were it not for that last comment. Qrow hated bringing up his advancing age. He frequently went out of his way to prove he wasn't getting old. He played video games with her, sparred against Yang, and was still a very active hunter.
No…, his eyes were just fine. Chances were, he intentionally knocked over her garbage bins to get her outside so he could scare her. Leave it to uncle Qrow to do something like that.
Ruby raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to fire off her theory but was cut off when the grizzled man started sniffing the air. "Is something burning?" he asked.
At that moment, she recalled that she had left the stove and ovens running when she went out. She gasped, "My mousse! Crap!" With the speed and franticness of a mother whose child was choking on a grape, she sprinted to the stove. She arrived just in time to witness perfectly good - and expensive - Atlesian dark chocolate scorch in her saucepan. It was meant to be the base for the topping on Blake's not-penis cake.
It was all she could do to not tear up as filthy black smoke rose from the innocent confection. It never had a chance. Now, whatever phenomenal treat it would have made mattered not, for it would never fulfill its destiny. In a moment of silence, of reverence for the fallen chocolate, Ruby bowed her head and turned off the burner. "Rest easy, my sweet," she whispered. "You shall be avenged."
"Ya know, I was about to say something about you caring a little too much about your cakes," Qrow said from behind her. "But I dropped a bottle of twenty-year-old bourbon last week. I haven't cried like that in years."
Her shoulders sagged, and she let out a sigh as she turned to face him. Leaning against the wall, he bore a look of concern for his niece. His face was never hard to read, at least, not for her. Ruby knew from times she been out with him that Qrow could put on a mask and fake it with the best of them. But he never was like that with her. It was part of the reason she loved him so much. That, and he'd let her stay up past bedtime as a kid.
"That face says you've got more than some burnt chocolate draggin' you down," he said. "Something the matter, kiddo?"
She let loose a long and dramatic puff of air. "I may be under a teeny, tiny, bit of stress. I've only got to have two dozen cookies, a baker's dozen of brownies, and a special pen-cake done by tomorrow night."
It wasn't really a whole lot. Especially not when compared to her everyday workload. But the swift deadline, combined with the desire to make everything perfect for Yang's partner, had her scrambling. Along with her jumpiness and sudden onset of paranoia, Ruby was a nervous wreck at the moment.
If she'd had a mirror, she would have seen it show in the way her eyes were deliberately widened, as if she was trying to stay awake.
"That's quite the list," Qrow nodded as she jumped up and sat on the batter-covered counter. "Can you handle all that? It's a lot for just one person."
Ruby shook her head. "Not really, I'm just kinda… I don't know, freaked out right now."
"I got an idea," he stated. Ignoring her raised brow, he continued, "What say you and me go grab a bite, you can vent about whatever's eating you, and you get to all this in the morning." He gestured to the kitchen in emphasis.
"I don't know," Ruby sighed. She looked around. The place was disarray - well, more so than usual anyway. Cake batter, flour, and sugar littered the countertop. The stove was covered in spots where things had dripped or boiled over. Even the light flickered ominously as if to say the room itself was running on fumes. "I really don't have any time to waste."
Qrow held up a finger. "It's not a waste if you're doing something productive."
"How is going and chatting over dinner productive?"
"It'll get your mind off things; help clear your head a little before you explode."
Ruby closed her eyes and began massaging her temples. She really couldn't afford to take a break like that. But maybe he was right. Here, she was only doing more harm than good in her frantic state. Perhaps going with him would help to calm her down.
She felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder. Qrow looked at her with stoic and caring eyes. "C'mon, have I ever steered you wrong?"
She snorted. "Yes, actually. Quite a few times."
Ah, Ruby. You're getting your first taste of what I go through every semester. I start out fine, make good grades, and am doing great in the classes. Then, the dreaded mid-terms hit I give myself a panic attack for no good reason other than completely unwarranted stress. Seriously, drop me in an advertising project with no instructions, and I'm fine. Ask me to make it past the withdrawal period without freaking the fuck out, no can do.
P.S. - If any of you managed to catch the slight Emperor's New Groove reference in there, you are cool and had an awesome childhood.