Rogue Huntsman

Afraid

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Ruby disassembled Crescent Rose into three large pieces. She laid out its scythe blade first, disconnecting that segment and sliding it aside. She then split the shaft in two to unveil the inner mechanisms of its rifle and trigger system.

"It really is all fused," Arex said, walking around the opposite end of the workstation and placing her arms on the table, "Each of these pieces, they'll have to be re-forged."

Her eyes scanned the weapon's interior, delicate fingers working through melted slides of metal and merged gears that would've been able to individually turn. She touched along the rifle's trigger and loading system, skimming past the priming bolt and the cartridge ejector.

Even the clip release was no longer operable…

"I know…" Ruby replied meekly, leaning against the workbench opposite Arex, "It'll take me all week to remake everything. I wasn't expecting that big grimm to be so hot."

She blew a swift breath into her dangling asymmetrical bangs, finishing with a disappointed pout.

"You haven't learned much about Dremoha yet, so it's not your fault," Arex offered, picking out a few pieces that survived the intense heat and warping they were placed under, "But your calculation's a bit off."

She set a couple more pieces aside before looking down the shaft in front of her, counting up everything in need of reforging and making a mental map of it all.

"We can get it done tonight."

"T-tonight?!" Ruby's eyes went wide, her silver irises immediately snapping to Arex, "B-b-but, the forge, most of the pieces need precise temperatures to make! We'll need to adjust the heat per segment, and each segment alone requires an entire treatment process and shaping!"

"Which is why we'll just use all the forges," Arex offered, reaching across the surface of the table and activating its built-in scroll. Through that, she connected herself into the room's circular grid of stations and activated them all.

"H-how are we going to manage all of them? And what about others? I can't be the only one in need of fixing their weapon…" Ruby replied, glancing to the door.

"I doubt too many others were brave enough to actually get close to the Hydra. They're students, after all. Some may have been stupid enough, but they were likely held back by someone who knew the grimm's surface temperature." Arex sifted through each individual forge on the digital display before her, something only administrator access was allowed to do.

Thankfully, Ruby didn't seem to notice what she was hacking into.

Through there, she readjusted each forge to a heat scale that met each necessary temperature they'd need. Ruby was right. They'd need several different temperatures to run through each forging process.

That process's time was doubled due to the intricacy of all these parts. Overall, this issue would've undoubtedly taken a week to finish.

But that was only taking into account a single forger.

Two people made things a bit more efficient. One can monitor and time the forges while the other works on the actual materials. The industrial sized laser cutter operated from designs submitted through a digital scroll system, making that process incredibly more efficient with how remote Arex could make it.

Grinding shouldn't take too long either. The more time-consuming processes were manually shaping certain pieces they couldn't simply cut from a sheet of metal and actually treating each piece to be dustrophobic.

Not to mention treating the rest of the weapon alongside the internal mechanisms.

If they were going to put so much effort into fixing Ruby's weapon, Arex was going to make sure it was as heat-retardant as possible to make sure it wouldn't happen again. But she didn't want to stop there.

She wanted to make sure the entire weapon repelled Dust in all varieties. That meant it'd be incredibly heat resistant but it'd also resist the opposite extreme temperature as well.

"I take it you were too fast for your partner to stop you?" Arex asked, setting the temperature in the final furnace on the list before turning her gaze to Ruby.

The young girl shrunk slightly from the question, "Maybe?"

"You were," Arex sighed. She knew what Ruby's semblance was by now considering she used it herself in the Hydra fight.

How fast Ruby goes in comparison to how fast she went personally… she didn't know. She only got a taste of the reaper's speed.

That curiosity wouldn't get to her, though. Not now.

They had a few minutes of waiting for the time being. She could speed up the furnaces herself, but she didn't exactly want to show Ruby her affinity.

The girl already knew about her wings. Adding another secret to that list might not end well, especially since she wasn't even sure if Ruby could keep the first secret to herself.

"Thank you, by the way…" Ruby muttered, pulling her arms closer to herself, "for helping me with this."

Arex broke any eye contact with Ruby and looked elsewhere, "Don't worry about it. Did you treat your weapon with anything before? Or was it only just fire Dust applied…?"

She slowly brought her eyes back to the girl, watching as a couple emotions crossed Ruby's face for a few passing seconds. She held up a finger, about to answer with something… but those words soon left her as she slouched her shoulders.

Deflated.

"I think it was just fire Dust. I wanted to apply ice as well, but the two Dusts kept clashing and every time I tried the metal would crack and… yeah…" she slowly breathed out, peeking a cute silver gaze back at Arex's own expression.

It wasn't anything patronizing or critical, not even analytical or calculative at the moment. It was just… slightly amused.

"Ever get one of your weapons treated to be dustrophobic?" Arex asked.

"No," Ruby replied with a baited breath, letting it all out in a tired sigh, "We couldn't afford anything high-end like that. Signal had a decently sized forging room and a decent backing, but it's the academies the government prefers to fund."

"Well, we have the means to do it here," Arex informed, nodding to the immense circular room around them, "Want to make Crescent Rose completely immune to all Dust effects and temperatures?"

Ruby's eyes perked up to that, her whole demeanor changing in an instant as she tossed her hair up and down, "Yes! I've always wanted to."

Arex spared a small, bemused smile, tapping away at the scroll beneath her absently as she turned her gaze to the side. Her anxiety wasn't as bad with Ruby… Though, it helped that they were alone.

If there was a crowd… or even one other student in the room, things would've been a lot more strained for her.

Instead, it was just the two of them.

The list beneath her slowly began to glow green in completed progress bars, each forge reaching the temperatures she set them to in the next few seconds.

"Let's start with cutting all your pieces out," Arex said, tapping the workbench in front of her and looking to Ruby's scroll, "Still got your weapon's designs on there?"

"Yeah, of course," Ruby pushed her scroll forward and onto the built-in scroll of the table, a digital circle quickly forming around the device as its files were read, "I can find all the pieces we'll need. Are these everything that still function?"

Ruby picked up a few stray pieces, turning one of them around with her fingers as she looked to the rest of her disassembled weapon.

"To tell you the truth, I'd rather we just re-cut everything," Arex admitted.

Against Ruby's own knowledge, there were methods performed during the heat treatment process that directly involved aura. Additionally, if you merged that with an alloy to create a perfect balance between spring steel and memory metal, it won't just be durable…

It would be able to rebound from any deflection or heavy clash without any lasting damage.

"I don't want you wasting too much time on this. You're already being really generous as it is," Ruby responded, placing the piece down.

"If I'm going to help you, then that includes advice as well. I want to use a different set of materials to build the interior of your weapon again," Arex informed, placing her warm cheek in the palm of her hand, "And again, don't worry about it. I… like working on weapons."

"A-are you sure?"

Arex gave the reaper a small nod, letting her eyes drift to the closed furnace at their station. She let the flames behind its door dance around out of sight, flicking them left and right to hold her mind in place.

"Okay, but… I used the best material possible for it. What do you want to use?" Ruby asked, watching as the girl's gaze slowly grew distracted.

"A variation slowly making its way into the forging world," Arex replied. She wouldn't admit it, but it was her design that was making its way into the common knowledge of smiths and forgers across the kingdoms, "It's a merge of titanium-alloy memory metal and a low-alloy spring steel."

"I… didn't even know that was possible…" Ruby murmured, her eyes looking down as she thought it through, "What does it make?"

"A light-weight blade," Arex replied with a shrug, finally bringing her eyes back to the red reaper's silver gaze, "It'll have an incredibly high yield strength and an insane malleability to it. So…"

She gestured to Crescent Rose with her free hand, watching as Ruby's mind visibly sped up.

"Meaning, even after heavy deflection it won't require any repairs! It won't even twist or warp through too hard a clash!" Ruby realized, Arex watching her eyes grow wide with excitement.

"If it ever does, you can just heat it and cause the memory metal to kick in," Arex replied with an amused smile, watching literal colors dance around the girl's face, "It'll return to whatever shape you set it to once forged."

"It's… i-it's…" Ruby was tripping over her words in her own excitement, rushing from thought to thought and forgetting whatever trains she kept building in the wake of her mind, "It's smart! Really smart! I… I never thought to make an alloy like that…"

"That's because it's not possible without certain procedures being done," Arex mentioned, "It wasn't something that could've been easily discovered."

"It just makes it even more amazing…" Ruby couldn't help it, she really couldn't. She loved this kind of stuff, "Do you know who invented it?"

Arex only shrugged and looked away, "They like to keep themselves known only by an alias. Sparrow, if you know her…"

"S-Sparrow?!" Ruby, hands down - literally, she threw her hands down onto the table - knew that name by heart, "I follow her posts! She releases designs weekly and has an incredible following. Her works are amazing, every single one of them. But I checked her posts this morning! I didn't see anything about a new alloy…"

Arex mentally rolled her eyes, tilting her head ever so slightly as she watched Ruby's excitement only flourish, "It was only just released to the public. The formula and method of its forging were actually forwarded to a couple people a few days ago."

"W-wait," Ruby suddenly dashed around the table, taking Arex's shoulders in her grasp as she gripped the fabric there, "Were you… one of them?!"

"Honestly? No, not really," Arex offered with a smile.

"Then…" Ruby's fingers clasped all the tighter, "how do you already know about it if it was only just released?"

Arex took that second to take a step back, but as soon as she did Ruby closed the distance made from it, "I-it helps that I… may or may not… know her…"

Considering she was her, it was more of a 'may not'.

Ruby's eyes only widened even further.

"Before you explode," Arex started, holding up a quick finger and pushing Ruby's face back by the tip of her adorable nose, "I can't tell you anything personal about her. You have to understand that."

Ruby quickly nodded her head, opening her mouth to take in a quick breath-

"And nothing about her appearance either. She… doesn't like the attention."

The reaper paused a moment, then slowly let that breath out, ready to ask at least one-

"She… also… doesn't want me to talk about her… to anyone."

Ruby pouted, "Awe! Come on, really? Nothing?"

"She's reserved like that," Arex offered, watching as Ruby slowly released her tight grasp on her sweater and moved back to her spot at the workstation, "I don't think that'll ever change…"

"People change," Ruby sulked, squishing her cheeks into her hands as she stared at Arex across the workbench, "Can you at least tell me if she's nice?"

Arex, with her balance back in her own hands, quietly slipped her arms back onto the table and lowered her gaze. Nice… that was always such a hard term to define… with how vague it truly is.

"She tries to be…" Arex replied distantly, satisfying Ruby for the time being.

This lousy bar couldn't hold a candle to the one I have back at my place.

Rain began to slowly fall around me, dispersed in ill-timed drops as I tilted my cowboy hat up. Gray skies swept across the atmosphere above, blanketing Vale in a dark haze of perspiration and building electricity.

The clouds in the distance were dark, black… and they sparked with fading white light.

Another storm was on its way to Vale.

I didn't feel like clearing it this time.

"Niro, is that you?"

A familiar voice spoke at me from the bar's entrance, drawing my gaze from the clouds as a woman with red hair looked at me from its open door.

Red hair and golden eyes were all I cared to notice on her, considering she'd love it if I stared at all the other places most men preferred to drop their gaze to. She was one of my patrons, an annoyingly flaunty one with a seemingly insatiable desire to be given attention.

Anoel never liked her… maybe it was their bust sizes. I didn't know, this one always looked like she'd fall over from her chest alone.

"Seraphine," I tipped my hat to her, rain water falling from its rim as the weather began to pick up.

"It is you! Your bar's been closed for a few days now, so I'm hopping around town looking for a place to drink while you're away," she spoke out to me through the pelting water, holding the door open for me, "Are you coming in?"

I was 278 jobs in by now, completing catch and release escort missions, targeted stolen goods side-missions, delivery routes, Grimm clearing assignments, anything I could find to sate my boredom.

But it seemed the rest of the jobs on the list were timed for past midnight… which meant I had a few hours to kill.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do so literally.

Not like alcohol would help either when my body's already immune to its effects. But that never stopped me from drinking in the past.

I moved forward and walked inside, letting Seraphine close the door behind us as I looked around. The water on my coat slowly steamed away, my gaze taking in the details of my surroundings before I moved for the bar at the back.

Stools ran across its front, some of them filled. Square tables littered the room I crossed, chairs circling each one with only 18 customers scattered about the bar's open floorplan. 3 other people took to the stools at the bar, leaving 7 available seats for anyone else to take.

Scroll monitors dotted the high walls of the room, spewing whatever news the broadcasters cared to spit at us as I took the furthest stool to the right, at the bar's corner.

Seraphine had the brawn to take the one to my immediate left.

She wore a dark, crimson coat, covering most of her body from the rain outside. She took that off as soon as she sat down, pale shoulders visible in a backless, black dress. Beneath the cut skirt of her thigh reaching attire, she wore black, heeled boots, each reaching as high as her own knees.

It didn't take long for a few men to start taking their glances, it happened everywhere she went. It started happening a little less when she stopped wearing her usual red and transitioned to black eight months ago.

That was when Anoel started avoiding her.

I knew why, though. She switched to black because she found out it played into my preferences.

"So, getting back into the business?" Seraphine asked, crossing one elegant leg over the other, purposefully left over right to brush her leg against my jeans.

"More or less," I replied, moving my own leg away as the bartender reluctantly made his way over. I didn't know him, didn't want to. He owned a bar, I owned a better one.

He took our orders and scurried away. His eyes only looked toward me in building fear, keeping whatever wit he had in him silenced in an attempt to not get my attention in the wrong way.

Everybody avoided my bad side, it seemed.

They were all idiots. I only had a bad side.

Though, Anoel won't quit in her attempts to convince me otherwise…

"There has to be more to it than that," Seraphine's silken voice slipped through the dull background noise of the news above us, "You've taken contracts before, but you've never had to close your bar to do so."

She was taking advantage of the fact Anoel wasn't here.

"I had to this time," I muttered lowly, reaching out to catch the sliding glass of my drink the bartender pushed my way. He was keeping his distance. Perfect.

I took a slow sip, tasting whatever he threw together for me. I asked for the strongest concoction he had…

This tasted like I was gargling pebbles soaked in nine different brands of dry whiskey, then lit on fire.

It was decent enough.

Seraphine hummed for a moment, sipping from a thin black straw as her golden eyes took me in, "I guess your business is your own."

"It's never anyone else's anyway," I countered, getting a crooked smile from the woman beside me.

"True, but I'd love to at least share a conversation with you. Do you know how hard it is to get you to talk?" she asked, stirring her straw around as she smiled.

Anoel never seemed to have any problems doing just that.

"Maybe it's because I don't want to," I replied, drinking into the next half of my drink and letting the ice shift, "Or, maybe it's just you in specific."

"Me? Honey, you're the only man who doesn't talk to me," she replied, her fingers having the seemingly potent audacity to touch the sleeve of my arm.

"I wonder why," I vocalized my inner sarcasm for once, letting the words drift as icily as the alcohol in my cold beverage, "I wouldn't bother trying."

"Why? Are you taken?" she furrowed her brows, leaning forward slightly to try and catch the gaze of my lime green eyes, "It can't be that baseless info-broker I always see you with… can it?"

Baseless was a term used by people that had no idea what the word meant. Using it, by definition, was a baseless action that only emphasized the ignorance of its attempted use.

Besides, the answer to her question was simple.

"You think I'm in a romantic relationship?" I asked, taking the last portions of my drink in. Whatever ice was left clattered against glass as I set my empty beverage down, pushing it aside for now.

"Well, yes, you have to be," she justified her own thoughts with her own words, it seemed, "But, even then… there's no way you could've…"

"Resisted for this long?" I finished, turning half my gaze to her.

She was taken aback, almost confused by the words I threw at her.

She should be.

"Your semblance isn't a card that can be played on any table," I said, brushing her fingers from my arm and letting their delicate pads fall to the bar's surface, "It requires your mind's dominance over someone else's will. You can't charm everyone you see."

"But everyone I've tried it on has been so easy…" she retaliated, leaning toward me with uncertainty, "My semblance has even worked on instructors, professors at academies, but… it can't even so much as touch you?"

"You haven't tried very hard," I retaliated, my eyes drifting to the bartender and catching his wandering gaze. He immediately started fixing me another drink.

"I did… physical contact is the most direct way," she reached out and touched the back of my hand, the one that wasn't gloved, "but…"

I caught a new glass that slid my way, full of another serving of whatever stones I drank from my previous beverage mere seconds ago.

"Something wrong?" I asked with a half-amused smile, almost patronizing in appearance.

I took that moment to take a sip of my second dosage of liquid poison, the concoction sliding down my throat as I set the glass back down.

"I… don't feel anything. I can always sense a heat stemming from someone's lust and emotion, but you…" she slowly withdrew her fingers, clutching them into the palm of her hand as she sought out my eyes, "I feel nothing."

"Like I said, your charm doesn't work on everyone," I reiterated, drinking another half.

It was an impossible task… what she was searching for. There was no way in any hell or any godforsaken planet I'd ever return the attention she was craving.

I didn't even know why she was insane enough to crave it anyway.

"Find someone else," I followed up, setting my glass down as my voice grew low again, "It'll be more worth your time that way."

That seemed to quiet her down, and for the sake of boredom and a distraction, I tuned into the news report broadcasted through each of the scroll monitors throughout the shady bar.

"Aside from Sparrow's most recent development hitting the kingdoms by storm, Sentinel seems to have gone dark. Their weekly raids have paused, raising tension across faunus labor corporations across the kingdoms. Are they preparing for a larger scale attack? Or, are they finally taking a respite after all this time?"

Sentinel… the masked group of digital renegades wreaking havoc across the digital world for large and small companies alike. The one group of hackers to ever maintain such a high streak of anonymous cyberattacks…

They siphon money, release deeply guarded secrets to the public, break systems ordinarily set in place to limit the freedom of workers, deliberately raise salary counts across the board… Sentinel was the stereotypical 'steal from the rich, give to the poor' group.

But they worked from an online list of names. Each name on the list is submitted by the public, and additionally, the public up-vote whatever name they wish to prioritize and seek retribution from.

It was a game… a sadistic, cynical, overwhelming display of power some kids want to flaunt to the rest of the world because they figured out such a big, security flaw in the system.

We route every goddamn piece of information through designated towers throughout the land. Sure, we can bounce signals from one to the other, but they were focal points.

They bottleneck the information, making it all ripe for the picking if security was compromised. Digital databanks were developed because of this…

But even those were an easy task for the group to hack into.

Arex was hired to protect certain pieces of software from up-voted companies a few times. Most she turned down considering she wasn't a fan of those companies herself. But, sometimes a company was prioritized that she did business with…

So, she played the neutral card and did what she could. Those were some of the few times Sentinel had trouble.

Every other time, the masked group's list alone forced companies into total 180s. Being up-voted was like setting the noose for an execution and inviting the public to pull the lever.

Sentinel was only interested in watching the corpse fall.

After all, if a company didn't change their ways in the small window before their cyberattack… they'd fall to the ruin of the public eye.

It was rather efficient, but incredibly naïve.

A certain level of ignorance was needed to run this world…

It was far too dark to go a day without turning a blind eye.

"You know," I heard Seraphine's voice again, drawing my attention back to her, "I think only one thing's been proven tonight."

Her purrs rolled from her soft lips, making a move to lean closer to my side.

"Your immunity only makes me want you even more~"

"Curiosity tends to kill, I hope you know that," I replied, but she only proceeded to snake her arms beneath my own and bring her stool closer, "More contact won't work either."

"I'm not trying to make my semblance work," she chastised, grabbing her drink and pulling it back toward her now that she repositioned, "I just want to get closer to you while I can. You're not behind a bar this time."

I moved from her grasp before she could blink. She didn't even realize something was off until she looked up and noticed a shocked, nervous, and completely confused bartender's face in the place of where mine should've been.

I exchanged placed with the man. He needed a woman in his life… probably.

As Seraphine recoiled away from the flustering bartender like he was a burning flame, I took my drink back into my grasp from my new position behind the bar… in front of the woman sitting at its other side.

I half-wondered if his ears popped from how fast I moved him.

"Behind the bar, you say…" I said, leaning against the bar's surface before Seraphine.

Her cheeks grew uncharacteristically red, her face quickly flushing beneath her own astonishment as I swirled my drink around, "H-how did you-"

"Don't ask stupid questions," I cut her off, "I hate those."

She snapped her mouth shut, golden eyes trying to read my own beneath the rim of my hat. The bartender beside her eventually got up as she remained silent, making his way back behind the bar again. He made no move to get me out of it.

He really was terrified of me… I preferred it that way.

'Arex, I got called away to do something. I won't be back for another hour or two, so I need you back in the room as soon as possible.'

They were nearly done with Ruby's weapon, the final stretch actually. And that was just assembling all the pieces into their respective places. The entire process had only taken three hours, bringing the time closer to eleven.

But one text seemed content to stop Arex's help from going any further.

"Hey, Arex. Your sister's messaging you," Ruby informed absently, focusing on a few tiny pieces in a nest of others before her.

Arex set whatever tools she was using down to respond.

'We're finishing up soon. Is it important?'

She sent her response to keep working on her own intricate array of parts, but her scroll immediately pinged as soon as she hit send.

'Very.'

'What is it? We'll only be another few minutes.' Arex was getting a little concerned now, switching whatever attention she had before to her scroll.

'It started raining about half an hour ago, a couple minutes after I left the room. A storm's brewing and lightning will start flashing soon. I need you back there, now.'

'It's a storm. I still don't see your point.'

'It'll start getting worse very soon, and this isn't about me.'

The high walls of the forge room suddenly shook, piercing thunder riding down from the stone smoke stacks towering above each stationed furnace.

The rain was growing heavier, crashing against the building in windy currents now.

'Is this about Kitsuki?' Arex asked, the dull ambiance of the storm filtering in from around her.

'Yes,' there was a short pause in the messaging, but Arex was already starting to shut the forges down remotely, 'Kitsuki's deathly afraid of lightning.'

That message alone was enough for Arex to make her decision. But what followed only fueled whatever haste she was finding herself drawing on.

'I don't want her alone right now. Something in her past scarred her for life, I don't know what yet. But this fear isn't something as shallow as a phobia. It stems from something that nearly killed her.'

Arex's heart seized at those words. She hated stories like this, she's experienced them too many times to only see it as a fantasy. It was a fear she knew existed in far too many people…

But to be alone while your anxiety and petrification seeped through your entire being… it was more than enough to force her to run.

"I'm sorry Ruby, something's come up." Arex dropped her tools into a storage box, quickly sliding that beneath the workstation as she cleaned herself up at one of the sinks, "Can you finish this on your own?"

"Yeah, sure. Is everything alright?" Ruby glanced up in mild worry, watching Arex make her way to the door.

"Um, for the most part. There's just… something important I need to do," Arex replied, swiping the panel beside the large metal doors.

"Okay. This meant a lot to me, you know," Ruby replied back, wanting to at least get her thanks across, "I can make it up to you-"

"Don't bother, I already said it's fine," Arex waved over her shoulder and left, leaving Ruby behind as the forge room doors closed behind her.

Lightning flashed through the halls as Arex entered a sprint, pulling her scroll back out to scan through the halls in front of her. No students walked within them or the paths leading from this building to the dormitory, so she fell into a dive and pulled out her wings.

Her speed tripled as she slipped out of the building's exterior doors, crashing through whatever rain that fell around her as the storm raged above.

She was soaked in a matter of seconds, but she didn't care. She knew where Kitsuki was coming from with this, and her heart continued to throb from the mere thought of leaving her alone any longer.

Thunder crashed down from the sky, illuminating the courtyards of stone and grass beneath her as each crack fueled the worries building up inside her. Pillars glowed and shadows were cast, her already darkened form only speeding up as she cut across gardens and foliage.

She could barely see through the veil of water in front of her, but she didn't need to. The lights of her dormitory burned in the distance and she homed in on its entrance, not cutting her momentum until she was three feet from the door.

She was in before they could even open all the way, dripping from wings to sneakers as she took the corner stairwell and made her way up.

Steam trailed behind her as she worked to burn the water away, her eyes glowing in the dim lights of the building as she made it to their floor in mere seconds.

Her shoes were almost dry now, digging into whatever carpet they could as she dashed down the hallway, skidding around the next corner to carry her momentum along its banking wall.

The hallway's doors flashed by in blurs as a streak of steam and blazing aura burned in her wake, silver eyes flashing as she cleared the straightaway in a fraction of a second.

The faunus crashed into the air in front of their dorm room door at a speed she wasn't used to, her lungs wracked for oxygen as she fumbled for her black scroll. The pain in her chest never stopped, and now, her heavy pants were only building onto the soreness already there.

It took two swipes, but the door finally swung open and she pushed her way into a darkened room.

It was there Arex stood, eyes dashing left and right as water dripped slowly from her long, ebony hair. The dim light of the hallway filtered in from behind her, casting her shadow onto the floor as she breathed heavily in its frame.

It was silent… of course it'd be silent. Kitsuki couldn't make any noise.

She closed the door quietly, keeping its click silent as she swept her gaze over the beds. They were all empty.

The bathroom door was open and dark, and the closet next to it was open as well. The only doors that were closed were the one behind her and… her own closet…

The one she shared with Kitsuki…

She pushed her affinity into the room and kicked off her shoes. She was in there… there was no other place she could've been.

The girl crossed the room in a flash of light, thunder shaking the window in the darkness of the bedroom as she steamed softly in its shadows. Her reflective eyes burned again, glowing embers engulfed in a sea of dark blue irises.

Her fingers pressed against the door before her… tiny movements shaking through… but nothing more than a small tremble.

It was enough.

She slowly slid the closet door open, a soft click following the release of its latch as she lowered into a low crouch. She pushed the door further, stopping it just past halfway as another flash of light entered the room behind her.

For that brief, shining moment, she saw her.

Kitsuki sat curled up against the back wall of the closet. Her tails were quivering, tightly wrapped around as much of herself as physically possible while her hands remained against her head, holding her fox ears down.

Her eyes were squeezed closed, her face hidden behind the drawn up knees of her pale legs.

And when the thunder followed… she silently squealed and held herself all the tighter.

"Kitsuki…" Arex breathed out, her voice nothing more than a whisper as she watched the girl quiver in her own tails.

The storm rattled the walls around them, but the room seemed to fall into a dull, ambient silence. They both had night vision, so Arex didn't bother with pulling out any light from her scroll.

She kept her movements slow and gentle, lowering onto her wet knees as she leaned slightly forward. The closet was eerily still, the only movement within its shadows was the small shaking of the scared girl against its wall.

Arex's heart seized again…

She reached out a pale hand in the darkness of the room, careful beyond measure… but following its movements through before the next lightning struck.

Her delicate fingers hovered over the tails curled around Kitsuki's legs, staying in movement for just a moment… before Arex carefully grazed her hand over Kitsuki's soft fur.

It was a gentle touch, one embraced in a subtle heat and still fingers… but Arex kept from going further, only keeping to that small, careful contact.

Kitsuki's shivering seemed to settle for a moment, and for a few passing seconds, the girl slowly unsealed her hands from her head.

Two white fox ears fluttered and unfolded slightly, no longer pressed against the top of her head. Her chin followed in the tiniest of ways… and as the seconds crept by, two golden-orange eyes silently cracked open in the darkness of the closet.

Arex gave the girl a small smile, "Hey…"

Then the room flashed under the strike of lightning and thunder.

And Arex fell back, pushed onto the support of her hand behind her as she found a girl thrown into her arms. White hair slowly drifted and fell as a shaking frame threw itself into her grasp, tails trailing in the fading light of lightning before wrapping around Arex's legs.

Kitsuki's arms tightened around Arex's back as soon as the thunder broke into their room, her face stuffed into the sweater of the girl's damp chest.

"It's alright," Arex quietly murmured, pushing herself back to lean against the frame of a bed behind her. She urged more heat into the room, gently running her fingers through Kitsuki's silken hair to try and calm her down.

Lithe, pale legs shook and curled up behind the girl in her arms, drawing back in as Kitsuki's fox tails tightened their holds.

"Just keep still, everything's going to be okay," Arex continued to speak quietly, brushing down Kitsuki's ears.

She needed a way to distract her… anything to block the noise out.

Anything to take her mind off the storm.

Ah, Niro in his natural environment… he seems much more laid back and relaxed in a bar as opposed to his least favorite place in Vale. He's a lot more aggravated and disconnected when he's at Beacon, a lot more dismissive too.

Niro gets up to his own shenanigans from time to time, he's not all serious… I think…

He's actually really fun to write for. His persona's defined by some very specific, but also very incredibly broad factors. All of it comes together to both help define him and define his actions and words.

Someone's taken to defining Niro as… Niro. I kind of like that description, it's a rather fitting way of explaining how Niro would act.

Arex and Kitsuki though… any ships setting sail yet? They're so adorable together, I can't help it.

I wonder how Arex will help Kitsuki through the night in the next chapter.

No Flame yet? It's okay. I'm just WAY more motivated to write RH right now. Hopefully I'll get to flame next…

For now, Favorite and Follow.

I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.

Cya XP