Here's another surprise update since I have free time this evening.

Significant Changes: This chapter contains completely new scenes. Scenes that were only alluded to in the other fiction, but never shown. The exact text was the following:

"That one typical little moment was going to become something of a routine among them. Trial and error. Problem solving as they went. At first, there were a great many problems to sift through. Personal issues for Yang. Aggravations for Weiss. Ponderings about moral stigma, for Blake. And Ruby watched it all, guilty that she was the one who caused it."

I regret not covering those things more clearly. I regret not taking the time to write them. At first I wanted to simply write a family centric story only, but leaving those milestones out took out a huge chunk of characterization that I turned out to actually wanted later on. I could have done without it, but the story was lesser for those omissions, and that was one of the things I truly felt was unforgiveable.

As such these next few upcoming chapters will be unseen content for a while. Pure additions to the story. I hope you like them.

Original chapter length: 1,749
Revisited chapter length: 3,368

"Regular dialogue" [Faunus speech only]

Chapter 9

Ruby was in the kitchen slicing up potatoes when the squeaky sound of the mailbox was too much to ignore. Setting the knife down and drying her hands on her apron, she stepped outside to gather what was in the box. There was a sizeable chunk of mail. Most of it was junk sent by mission recruiters. The invitational note cards came with a seat at a banquet dinner, along with promises of big payouts, fame, and fortune.

The team leader grumbled under her breath, crumpling each and every single one she found.

Today there were several, each wanting hunters and huntresses to sign up for the next biggest craze. What those overzealous advertisements rarely explained were just how dangerous those missions could be, especially the ones that came from the Schnee Dust Company. It might as well have been a death wish waiting to happen, but for newly minted teams, they sounded like a dream come true. If only those flyers provided half of what they claimed, then maybe they wouldn't be so worthless.

Beneath all the junk mail, there were a few household bills that were due at the end of the month.

"Mail's here." Ruby called as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. "Mostly bills…"

"Just what we need." Yang called back from the rear of the home. "More crap."

"My mission payout came too!" Ruby fought back a smile, one of her payments had finally come. Six cards of lien arriving inside a sealed envelope. It was the agreed upon funding for a mission completed weeks ago. Like always, Ruby took some of it for herself. She left the rest of the cards on the kitchen table for someone else to deal with.

Yang's envelope sat there too, with a much thicker stack of cards of various denominations. Ruby had never paid too much attention to her earnings, and her personal ethos as a huntress had always been rather simple. So long as her most basic necessities were met, the little luxuries would come to her in time. She hadn't been proven wrong yet, but, she had seen firsthand the prices of baby things across store shelves.

Knowing the skyrocketing expenditures made her frown down at the two cards she had taken. It wasn't justifiable, not this time. Biting her lip, she tossed those back onto the stack of household funds too.

"You don't have to do that, you know…"

"I don't really have a choice…" Ruby trailed off, embarrassed that her personal conflict had been seen. "We're all going to have to start pulling our weight around here, and that means I can't be skimming off the top of my earnings anymore."

"Suit yourself." Blake said with a shrug as she counted out her own earnings, leaving a majority of it in the pile with the rest. "Personally, I think you're doing yourself a disservice by not taking some of the money for yourself. We all take a little of the top, you should too." She showed Ruby the few cards she had taken before slipping them into a thin wallet. "You're the one that earned it in the first place. You should take a little reward."

"Yeah, but it's not like I earn all that much money to begin with." Ruby shot back, grabbing a can of soda from the back of the fridge and popping it open. "Besides, there's another mouth to feed now, and that's not a responsibility I can just ignore. It's fine, though. I can make do without it."

"Ah, so you think everything Yang can't manage falls on you now…" Blake said as she reached into the fridge too grabbing the carton of soy milk and a glass to drink it from. "You know that's not true, right?"

"It's more my responsibility than yours. I can't ask you and Weiss to pay for Ace." Ruby said honestly. "I know that Yang pulls in a decent income for a huntress, but I'm not sure that it'll be enough to compensate."

"We'll get by." Blake told her, replacing the milk and regarding her friend earnestly. "We always do, and that's not going to change just because you pull some spending cash off the top of your mission earnings."

"Maybe…" Ruby said quietly, her voice non-committal at best. She washed her hands in the sink before returning to the potatoes sitting on the cutting board. Her eyes focused entirely on her task, completely aware of the way Blake watched in concern. "Do you think I should change my certification?"

"I don't know, Ruby." Blake murmured swigging down the white liquid in her glass before sighing. "I guess that depends on what you're looking to accomplish. If you're worried about putting food on the table, don't be."

"I sense a 'but' someplace in that…" Ruby said, depositing the sliced up potatoes into the bottom of the pot that sat nearby.

"I won't lie, our household income holds us back from having a lot of little things." The Faunus had looked over the numbers more than once, and there wasn't any denying it. "We're never going to be stockpiling money away at this rate, and we might need to let go of a few things every now and then."

"Yeah, see, I was afraid you'd say that." Ruby went back into the fridge to pull out a slab of meat and what little was left of their vegetables. "I don't mind cutting back on the junk food. It's not good for us anyway. We're probably not going to be ordering out as much, either. I don't think Weiss will be very happy about that."

"It's an adjustment, but we'll get used to it." Blake said only partially believing her own words as she joined Ruby at the sink to wash her hands. "In the spirit of that, I'll even help with dinner…"

Blake wasn't daft…

There was something on Ruby's mind. Whatever it was had very little to do with the money on the kitchen table. The team gathered around the television for dinner, plates in their laps and eyes glued to whatever sitcom happened to be playing. It seemed like an average night, and something that would have been relatively normal..

If the woman in the armchair wasn't so focused on her plate...

Ruby cut into her meat distractedly, quietly taking small bites of her already small portion size. That simply wasn't normal, not for a huntress.

Even Weiss, who had gotten up to retrieve seconds began to notice. It wasn't just a minor concern. A huntress needed to eat. The nutritional needs of a working huntress was almost double that of the average woman. A strong aura completely depended on a well-balanced diet, and the same held true for most semblances. Rigorous training and long missions promised to take a toll on the body. Over time, it showed in poor health, lackluster semblance control, and weakened aura. Those rock-bottom deficits could only be recovered by replenishing vital nutrients that had been lost on the road.

Vitamins and supplements were no replacements for a well-rounded diet, half of which still sat on Ruby's plate untouched. The way that Ruby pushed her carrots around the plate didn't bode well, and the way she ignored the potatoes seemed like outright blasphemy.

Ruby looked up when a cold hand touched her forehead, Weiss gazing down at her partner in concern.

"You better not be sick." Weiss told her, adjusting her palm to a different location. "Though, it appears you don't have a fever."

"I'm not sick." Ruby said, ducking away from her partner's inspection. "I'm just not hungry."

"Which is why I'm worried." Weiss deadpanned, pointing to the unopened box of cookies that had been left forgotten on the coffee table. "When the human garbage disposal isn't hungry, there's a problem."

Ruby glared back at her, annoyed at the offhanded insult. It didn't last, though, because the concern in blue eyes was genuine. Weiss was trying not to let it show, but it came through loud and clear.

Ruby looked down at her untouched food. "I'm just thinking, that's all…"

"You've been thinking all day." Blake pointed out, she was also on her second helping, and Yang was on her way to retrieve her third after a hard day of combat practice with Pyrrha. Ruby was the only one not eating. "Normally you'd be fighting with Yang over the last bit of roast, but she's gotten up twice and you didn't even seem to notice."

"They've got a point." Yang said, sitting down with her third massive helping. "You're just poking at your food, which I'd bet you anything has gone cold."

"I want to back to the village." Ruby said, spearing a carrot onto her fork and stuffing it into her mouth. She only did it to appease the three sets of eyes watching at her.

"The village where you found Ace?" Weiss asked, watching Ruby nod. "Why would you want to go back there? You said there was nothing left."

"I only buried Raven." Ruby said, forcing down another bite of roast, grimacing as she swallowed. Yang was right, it had gone cold. "I didn't have time to take care of the rest. I didn't have the equipment. It was getting dark, a baby was the only survivor, and I had to escort the merchant I was going to leave there back to Vale..." All in all, Ruby hadn't had a choice at the time. "Just a basic threat assessment told me that there was no way I could have stayed to bury the rest of the dead."

"It's been a few days, Ruby." Weiss said slowly. "Scavengers and Grimm have probably picked the place over by now."

"What's left of the remains shouldn't be left to the elements though. All that will do is spread disease and bolster Grimm sightings in the area." Ruby shot back. "I want to go and take care of things properly like I should have done days ago…" Looking down at her plate only made her angry and she set it off to the side. "I've got to go back, it's the least I can do."

"Yang, are you sure that you and Ruby will be okay by yourselves?" Blake asked on her hands and knees, taking care to properly secure two bedrolls from their mission supply closet. They were old, beat up, and would probably only last another year or two. "Weiss could provide back-up. Only one of us needs to stay here with Ace, and I can do that."

"Nah, she should stay behind too. You can catch up on your reading, or something." The blonde said in a way that was almost too confidant for her own good. "Ruby and I will probably be fine on our own."

"There could be Grimm in the area." The Faunus warned, tying one of the bedrolls off before rolling up the second one. "It might do you two some good to have a little bit of backup."

"Could be a lot of things out there, Blake." Yang told her knowingly. "Besides, it would be stupid to drag anyone else along with us. It's just a day trip."

"A day trip with the possibility of lasting a lot longer." Blake shot back. "You don't know what it will be like when you get there."

"Even if it's bad, Ruby and I will camp out and be back by tomorrow at the latest."

"Make sure you pack food."

Yang grinned at that. "What, don't think there'll be anything to hunt?" Sadly, that grin was broken and it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"I think what'll be left might be too tainted to eat…" Blake deadpanned dryly, refusing to look at that fractured composure any more than she had to.

"Hey, I'm already on it." Yang wagged two tightly sealed packages in front of Blake. "Relax a little, okay?"

"I'm as relaxed as I'm going to be." Blake told her. "I still think that this is a completely idiotic idea…"

"Yeah, well, it might be…" Yang told her. "You know, it's not like I don't believe Ruby. I just need to go and see the village for myself." Yang stuffed two of her favorite meals-ready-to-eat in the front pouch of her mission pack. "It was a huge part of my childhood, and to think that it's gone…" She didn't want to think about it.

"I don't know, Yang. You didn't see her the night she came home. Ruby was pretty disturbed by it." Blake told her.

"I'm not really surprised. Ruby doesn't grieve well, never has." Yang let loose a slow breath, the pit in her stomach made worse by all of the bad memories that she recalled. "We weren't taught how to cope with that kind of thing. Dad shuts down. Uncle Qrow drinks. Ruby clings onto things… Honestly, she probably deals with it the best, all things considered."

Blake said nothing as she clipped the bags into place. That task completed, she went rummaging around in the back of the closet to replenish the first aid supplies in both bags. "I don't know if I like the idea of making her go back there."

"She's the one who suggested it…"

Blake clenched her jaw, stifling her next retort. It was true. Ruby had made the statement between mouthfuls of roast beef.

Her logic had been simple. Someone should go back and bury the dead. The villagers deserved better than to be left for the elements. She made the statement so fast that no one took her seriously at first. No one, except for Yang. It was only later that the choice was put into motion. Doing the dishes that the sisters stood side by side near the sink, formulating a plan that neither of their teammates could fully support. It was too soon, for too many reasons. Yet, the sisters were set on it.

Blake couldn't make a fitting argument against it, and neither could Weiss.

Blake bit her lip, trying to think of one anyway. She refused to consider of all of the things that could go wrong as she grabbed a small tube of disinfectant. Her fingers wrapped around the tube, squeezing it a little more tightly than she ever meant to. Words were harder to come by than Blake wanted to admit. The fact that she could hear Yang stuffing a few more items into her mission pack certainly didn't help.

"Ruby might have made the offer for you to come along, Yang, but she did that for your sake…" The Faunus finally found herself saying. "Ruby always bounces back, but you two are cut from the same cloth. When something big like this happens, you don't just get over it. I'm worried about her…"

"She's fine, Blake."

"Is she?" Blake shot back, her ears wilting at the thought of it. "Or, are you just hoping that she is?"

"Want me to doubt her? What good does that do? Even if she isn't, maybe this will help." Yang said quietly, her own frown working its way across her face. Fists forming at her sides as another slow breath dropped from her mouth in the form of a curse.

"Yeah, and what about you?" The Faunus wondered aloud, the bite in her tone more out of frustration rather than anything else. The hopelessness she felt pure in that alone. "I know you don't like it, but I'm worried about you. Both of you."

"You're wasting your time, it's pointless to worry about us. We're used to this." Yang muttered, tossing the final bits of field gear into her bag more violently than she needed to. "Look, I can't speak for Ruby, but I need this too. I was going to end up visiting the village anyway. I need to see Raven for myself."

"Yang…"

"Hey, it's not like I plan to go dig up her grave, or anything like that." The blonde shrugged, zipping up her bag. "The house should still be standing though. If it is, I want to see what's left. Maybe she left something behind."

That was it then, decision made. There would be no talking Yang out of it. Somehow, she suspected that Weiss wasn't having better luck with Ruby, either.

It was dangerous to go to a fallen village in the years after an attack. Even if Grimm hadn't torn it to bits initially, they were known to congregate around areas filled with malignant energy. Destroyed villages were good hunting grounds for depressed people and suicidal huntsmen looking for a swift death. The Grimm would lay waiting in the shadows. Even if no food came, they'd begin enjoying the dens they cultivated from the shambles of society.

Sending Ruby and Yang alone out into the wilderness was unthinkable.

They were not at their best. Neither one of them were emotionally sound enough to ward away the Grimm. The creatures sought negativity by nature. If anything, the sisters held just the sort of thoughts that would leave Grimm slobbering for the taste of blood. Even with that in mind, it seemed that she could only see the sisters off with a sigh and hope for their safe return.

After a restless night, daybreak came sooner than anyone truly wanted.

Weiss was on edge, sending Ruby off with a final lecture about keeping an eye on her brash older sibling. She watched them leave the house with squared shoulders and a clear goal in mind. Any other time, the ex-heiress would have found herself falling into step either behind or beside Ruby. In truth, she had fully expected to be ordered to gear up and be ready to leave at sunrise.

Instead, the orders passed down to her were nothing like she had expected. She needed to stay here, at the house. Ruby had spoken with such finality that no argument could have been made.

"Do you think they'll be alright?" Weiss asked, arms crossed as she leaned on one side of the doorframe. She had packed her mission bag too, just in case. It sat just inside near the door, but Ruby didn't want her to go along.

"In what way?" Blake asked, shaking her head at the stupidity of that question. Leaning unhappily on the other side of the doorframe, it took everything she had not to chase after them from the rooftops. "Ruby said that it was a small village. All things considered, they've gone to worse places on their own."

"That wasn't what I asked." Weiss said, blue eyes inclining to reach those of amber. Shared anxiety echoed within them.

"But, that was my answer." Blake retuned before she went back into the house to retrieve her book.

Weiss followed after a few moments later, closing the door behind her. Ruby and Yang wanted to be alone. This mission of theirs was a personal one, and outsiders had no business even thinking to impose upon it.

Then again, thinking like that was foolish, too.

After all, Ace had been left behind. That could not be overlooked. Ruby had entrusted their newest family member to the care of her teammates. The small Faunus was a mission all of her own. Weiss couldn't help but feel the weight of that, too. She and Blake had been ordered to stay behind for more than one reason. However, it was a dark fear that had set the stage.

Ruby's orders were particular, but the implied was horrible. If anything ever went wrong, the task of raising the child would fall directly to them. Slim a chance that it might be, a chance was still a chance, all the same.

"Blake, what do you really think about all of this?" Weiss asked quietly as she gathered Ace in her arms and sat down.

[Kin.] Ace mewed happily in greeting.

"Me?" Blake asked, looking back up over the pages. Ace was happily snuggling down into the warm arms that held her. The human oblivious to the true implications of the happy purring coming from the baby. "I think you have no idea what you're getting yourself into… None of you do…"