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A Rollercoaster To Say The Least
The next morning they packed up and started heading for the nearest town. Qrow said now that they had intel and Oscar/Ozpin it was time to prioritize searching for Ruby. He said they were only about a hundred miles from Haven Academy in Mistral which had been their destination all along. He was hoping if Ruby hadn't already reached there then she would soon, or they could ask for the Academy Council to help with a search.
She volunteered to take watches and patrols on the trip just to get away from Oscar. Normally he wasn't that bad but the other day Ozpin had wanted to have a talk with Qrow one-on-one and she's seen him take over the boy's body. The mere thought of it made her shudder. Ozpin's green Aura had flashed and his voice had taken on a strange quality. She'd left as soon as she could.
Their supplies were low but they managed to make it to a small town, and luckily Qrow said they could stay the night at an inn. They had to all share a room because funds were low but she did get first go at the bathroom. She took a bath for the ages and scrubbed off all the sweat and grime that had lingered on her for far too long. Her hair returned to a pristine white color and lost it's grey tinge that had been hanging around the last week. She felt so happy when she walked out she could practically sing.
She didn't have any money but she walked around the town and window shopped for a change of pace. She got a couple glances because she had her weapon strung through her belt but no one paid her an odd amount of attention. She knew they're money would be spent on supplies to get them the rest of the way to Haven but she indulged herself in looking at the wares of the small town. There was lots of food and produce and her mouth watered for some fresh food for once. For weeks it had been packages and dry granola bars. There was a small blacksmith who mostly made simple melee weapons for the villagers to defend themselves but she lingered on a silver-colored spear hanging above the register. It sent a pang of longing for Pyrrha through her heart.
She saw the Amazon in her mind. Red hair flying as she whirled her weapon like an extension of herself. Her hearty voice greeting them every morning at the breakfast table or her laugh as Jaune did something stupid again.
She was so lost in her thoughts she didn't hear someone was behind her until they cleared their throat loudly. "It's a beauty." Qrow growled as he took a swig from his flask.
"It reminds me of Pyrrha."
"Oh yeah, she had a spear didn't she?"
"Milo. She was the best with it."
"I only met her once, but she was a firecracker.'
"Pyrrha was everything I've ever wanted to be. Talented, intelligent, brave, beautiful, nice. Everybody loved her. She was just so good. She was always so patient with Jaune. She didn't whine when she didn't get the leader position like I did. She genuinely made her team better."
"Some people like that you just have to try and live up to. She's not here anymore. So you and all who knew her have to try and live like she would. The idea isn't to live forever, it's to create something that does. And it sounds like to me that she made friendships enough to last a lifetime."
"Yeah." Weiss wiped a tear from her cheek and took the duffel bag out of Qrow's hand. "I'll go get the stuff now. The usual?"
"Yeah, just a few days worth. We aren't far from Haven now."
She nodded and left the shop, carrying an odd combination of uplifting sorrow in her heart.
The next morning they headed out again and Weiss was in a much better mood. It only took two days to reach Haven and since it was a short trip she'd actually bought some of the delicious fruit the town and had for sale. She was eating a crunchy apple and swinging her legs off a tree branch in the early afternoon. She could see the CCT tower of Haven and knew they were only probably an hour walk away. Qrow and Oscar were talking below her but she didn't pay them much attention, not wanting strategy talk to dull the beautiful afternoon.
Finally Qrow motioned for them to move on and she followed them through the trees. A huge wall circled the Academy and they headed towards the grand gate that allowed entrance into the school. One thing that seemed off to Weiss was she didn't hear the usual rabble that came with an Academy but she shrugged as it was summer and figured everyone would want to be home with their families right now with the attack on Beacon. Qrow led their small party to the largest building besides the CCT tower. Despite his usual horrid slouching posture, Weiss could tell Qrow was uneasy too. He seemed on the defense the second they walked in.
Qrow led them to the headmaster's office and she met Professor Lionheart. He was a twitchy Faunus who seemed to constantly be looking over at a closet in the corner of his office. She made sure to position herself far away from it in case someone was hiding behind the inconspicuous door.
"Afternoon, Leo." Qrow nodded.
"Qrow! It's been a while. I was starting to worry you hadn't made it."
"You know me." he shrugged. "You received any other visitors lately?"
"What? No. Who would possibly want to come and see me?" his tail gave a twitch.
"My niece and her friends are running around here somewhere. We were hoping they made it here before us."
"I haven't heard anything but you know how it is with the tower down. There have been a lot of Hunter disappearances lately as well."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, as you know, we have a lot of Huntsman in the village and here that stick around in the summer for extra work. Lately a lot of them have turned up missing."
"How many?"
"A fair few. The Council hasn't approved me to assemble a search party yet with all the ruckus about. They claim it's more important to protect our borders."
"Your borders will be useless without Huntsman." Qrow grumbled. "Well, I need to find my niece first. Weiss, Oscar; why don't you go and find us some rooms? I need to have a chat with Leo here."
They nodded and headed out of the office, crossing the quad to the student dorms. Oscar led her with a mumbled 'Ozpin knows the way'. She reluctantly followed, scanning the area while they walked. Qrow had been right to be wary, apparently this area was woefully unprotected. She didn't see a single soul in the walls of the school.
Oscar led her to a dorm that had more dust than beds. Either it was a teacher's living quarters or they had some nice dorms here at Haven because on top of half dozen bedrooms there was a living room and a fully operable kitchen. The view from the balcony was breathtaking and she leaned on the railing for a few minutes. She chose a room in the back and made it clear she wanted to be alone. She tossed her bag on the bed and threw down her cloak, taking out a cloth to clean Myrtenaster with. After that was done she left Oscar and went outside to scout the area. One of the lessons Qrow had taught her was always know the layout of the land. You never knew when you had to make a hasty getaway. The ground were pretty simple and not quite as sprawled as Beacon. There was the Great House which housed the Headmaster's office, the CCT tower, the dorms, and the school building. She walked through the quad and let the breeze fly over her face. It was nice to be able to stay somewhere for a little while.
When she returned to the dorms Qrow was there, leaning on a dresser and talking to Oscar who she could tell was Ozpin at the moment by the way he held his cane. She skirted the room but Qrow called her in.
"I'm going looking for Ruby tomorrow."
"Did Lionheart know where she was?"
"No, but they're are some rumors in town of some Hunters doing some work. Pretty unusual seeing all of the Hunters are missing at the moment. They're in a village not too far from here if I'm right."
"When do we leave?"
"I leave tonight before sundown. Hopefully they spent the night."
She squinted at the enunciation. "I'm not coming?"
"Haven is in bad shape. They need a Hunter to clear out some of the Grimm who have been inching closer. I can't do both."
"So you get to go off and save Ruby and I'm stuck-"
"Doing your job. Yes, unfortunately desperate times call for desperate measures." he snapped.
"What if you need my help?"
"I've gone a long time without your help, somehow I think I'll make it. Haven needs you more than I will."
She huffed and crossed her arms. She hated it but his words rang true once again. "Fine."
She stomped off to her dorm and flung herself on the bed. She could travel a whole continent and she wouldn't get to finish the last mile. She knew he would be fine without her but she had been longing to see her friends again. Loneliness was a familiar feeling to but it didn't mean she had to like it. She heard Qrow close Oscar's door and walk down the hallway. With knowing he wasn't around she felt just a little more uneasy about the silence pressing all around the school. She decided to not be idle and grabbed her weapon to head out onto the quad. She stabbed the point into the ground and tried channeling the same energy she had felt when fighting the Knuckleave. But she felt nothing. Her sister had once told her emotions were powerful tools and it seemed they were the tools she needed to Summon. Which was...annoying.
Ozpin walked out of the dorm, probably to stretch his legs, and like a reflex the glyph lit under her sword. Instead of coaxing it further she shut off it's path to her Aura and let it fade. The boy wasn't Oz right now, just Oscar. As Qrow had said, he was just a fifteen year old kid. The added bit Oscar hadn't chosen this life had hit her hard. She remembered the conversation she'd had so long ago with her team when they'd camped in Mountain Glen about why they had become Hunteresses. She still remembered Blakes glare at her when she mentioned her company's name.
She ached for her friends so badly she felt it in her soul. She held out her hand and a glyph the size of her palm lit up. A miniature figure of her team arose, frozen in place as if she was looking at a picture. No matter what she summoned she never seemed to be able to do people like she could Grimm but the likenesses were there and she gazed longingly at her friends.
She plodded back to the dorms and pulled a picture she had out of her bag. It was the only one she had brought, and was of her team while they still went to Beacon. Before Pyrrha had died, before the Battle. Before the bad times. She curled up on the bed with the picture clutched to her chest.
With her cloak over her shoulders and her bag on her back she walked up to the Board that was in the village square. She felt stares weigh heavily on her as she swiped her Scroll over one of the jobs. She got the usual 'Are you sure you want to take this potentially lethal mission?' prompt but luckily her Huntress-in-Training title was enough to get her approved. The Board downloaded a map onto her Scroll and updated itself on her mission. It was cut and dry: exterminate a den of Beowolves that had gotten just a little too close for comfort.
The map guided her to a spot just a four hour walk outside the gate. She didn't even need the coordinates as the second she got within line of sight she knew where the den was. A huge mound of boulders was piled in the middle of the clearing, looking as out of place as a fox in a chicken coop. She studied the large rocks to see if she could find any solid evidence of human influence on their presence but her thoughts were rerouted the second a Beowolf emerged from the cavern. She was taken off guard seeing as it wasn't nightfall but maybe they'd sensed her. She took her rapier off her belt and held it in her left hand.
She had actually jumped through the brush to charge it when she saw a flurry of movement on the other side of the boulders. She casted a glyph right in front of her, flipping back into the bushes to sit back and watch. Three armed men and a woman were speeding towards the Beowolf who gave an immediate growl to his pack mates. A dozen more poured out of the cavern and charged the armed humans. The woman pulled a pair of shotguns out of the holsters on her back. Wedging the stocks of the gun under her armpits, she planted her feet in the ground and unleashed a lethal barrage of bullets. They didn't seem like Dust bullets to Weiss, they were just a little too slow and tame for that, but it was none the less effective. Most of the Grimm were engulfed in black smoke and fell to the ground within seconds. The three men with her drew swords from their hips and quickly dispatched the remaining Beowolves.
"You and you're damn guns, Lila." one of the men shook his head. "People can hear you for miles."
"Hey, I've put them away for almost three months now. One little excursion isn't going to kill us." she reloaded them before returning them to their holsters. "They get antsy if they don't get any action."
"More like your trigger finger gets antsy." he mumbled.
They headed back into the woods the way they had came and Weiss decided to follow them. They didn't look like hunters but they certainly weren't White Fang. The only other people she knew who roamed the woods were bandits, and if so she needed to know where their camp was. She waited until they were well out of sight before ducking into the cave to make sure all the Beowolves were dead. She almost felt like she'd cheated on her first contract.
She followed their trail as it headed back West and away from Haven. She started hearing noises and voices a few hours later and a large wooden wall emerged from the forest floor like an angry claw. She scaled a tree to get a better look inside and was slightly soothed by what she saw. No White Fang flags or masks were anywhere to be seen, but neither were any of the trappings of Huntsmen. But even if they weren't bandits they were out here outside of the town and that usually didn't bode well.
The camp was small but the wall looked well made, surrounding just a handful of buildings and maybe two dozen people or so. She spotted the group she'd been followed talking to a very short man with a very large gun strapped to his hip. She marked him as the closest thing they probably had to a leader and focused on mostly his movements. He wandered around the buildings to talk to his men, then retired into one of the buildings as the sun started to dip below the tree line. She pulled her Scroll out in the dimmest brightness setting to mark her position on the map and notes on what she was seeing. She waited until it was properly dark before standing up and resecuring her backpack, heading East to make her way back to Haven. She was about halfway back to town when she saw something besides her flashing through the trees. She stopped and knelt on a branch, casting her gaze around to see the movement again. It seemed the other person had done the same thing because she saw nothing through the dark trees. A bird rustled in the tree up above her which caused her to jerk her head at the movement. She gave a sigh and told herself to calm down before scanning the trees again. This time it was more fruitful and she saw Qrow crouching in the tree next to her.
She jumped over to land next to him but his eyes were already scanning the woods again. "Are you alright?"
She ignored the question. "What are you doing here?"
"You left this morning, Oz was getting worried you'd run into trouble."
I'm sure he was. She thought maliciously. "I ran into a group of people in the forest and tracked them down to a hideout over there."
"White Fang?"
"I don't think so. They just looked like bandits to me."
"I saw a couple airships earlier. Did you call in some back up?"
"I can't even check my email out here, Qrow."
He gave her a look before staring pensively into the darkness. "Where did you say that camp was again?"
She led the way back towards the camp, but the second they got anywhere near the camp she instantly knew something was wrong. Black smoke was rising through the trees and there was a smell in the air she didn't want to know the source of. As they got within line of sight her stomach gave a violent lurch. Every one of the bandits were dead. The dirt was a sickening red color across nearly every inch of the camp and people in white uniforms were loading weapons into two air ships that were parked nearby. A figure stood in the middle of it all with a blade as red as blood and directing the others. Brown horns stuck out of the top of his mask.
She turned to Qrow and he merely nodded grimly. They both recognized him as the guy who had tried to make Qrow's nap permanent weeks ago. She moved to grab her sword but Qrow's hand covered hers. She met his eyes and shook his head. She scowled but he just shook it firmer, physically removing her hand from the hilt. She did her best not to huff as they both watched the White Fang take anything of value from the camp. The airships shuddered to life and Weiss noticed they made much less noise than any she had ever seen. They were in and out of the camp in just the span of a few minutes, leaving a horde of bodies behind them. Qrow had them wait nearly an hour in the tree to make sure there weren't any scouts that had been left behind. Finally he gave her a nod and they jumped over the wall into the camp but it looked no better up close.
She checked inside the buildings, pushing down the nausea to see if any of them had any information in their pockets or on their persons. She found nothing in any of the buildings and found Qrow kneeling next to the Captain in the middle of the camp. He was kneeling over the Chief and examining a piece of paper when Weiss approached him.
"They didn't leave much behind. I barely found a candy wrapper."
"Chief here has a letter from some more bandits. Sounds like they discovered one of the White Fang hideouts nearby. Probably wanted to keep it quiet."
"I didn't find any survivors." she said softly.
"They know what they're doing. No doubt about that." he put the paper in his pocket and stood up, taking a heavy swig from his flask before addressing her again. "Let's head back to Haven."
"We're just going to leave them here?"
"There's not exactly anything we can do now, Weiss."
"We could bury them. They're still people."
"It wasn't like they were angels. They're bandits."
"You were a bandit." she shot back. She remembered Yang mentioning Qrow and her Mom had come from a clan, but the fact they were bandits was purely guesswork.
Apparently correct guess work because Qrow gave a sort of growl. "You want to waste your time and energy, then be my guest. I'm not wasting mine."
She flipped her ponytail and pulled out her rapier. She walked over to the field that was next to the camp and pointed at the ground. A huge glyph lit the darkness as she permeated the feeling of guilt and sadness in her mind, causing her large suit of armor to rise up from the ground. Instead of a sword he held a large shovel as he kneeled at her feet. She barely had to nod before he stood and started digging into the ground. His shovel was so large it could dig a grave in one swipe so he was finished in just a few minutes. Next it walked over into the camp and began picking up the murdered bandits one by one. As they were laid into their final resting place Weiss casted a glyph next to the pile of dirt next to each grave to fill them. About an hour later everything was complete. Her armor knelt next to her as she bowed her head. The bandits had truthfully probably not been the best people, but all she could think about were the people probably still buried under rubble in Beacon that would never got a proper burial. The flashbacks this time were not overpowering or all-consuming, but none the less potent. The heaviness in her chest grew even more staggering as she thought on everyone that had been lost that night.
Her armor stood up once again as she turned away, and Qrow started heading back into the city without a word. They had barely taken ten steps when a fiery slit appeared right next to Qrow. He didn't seem too surprised but Weiss jumped back and brandished her sword. Out of the portal emerged the front half of a motorcycle, followed by a blonde mane that made Weiss freeze in her tracks.
The second Yang was through the portal it closed. She dismounted her bike and set the helmet on the seat before turning to her uncle.
"Well, about time." Qrow grumbled.
"Where's Ruby?"
"Back at Haven. I'm just running an errand." he jerked his head back at Weiss.
At the sight of the shorter girl Yang looked slightly embarrassed, using her human arm to rub the wrist of her animatronic one. "Weiss, I'm sorry about-"
Weiss had flung herself forward, wrapping her arms around Yang's neck and trying to fight tears. "I missed you so much."
She felt Yang tense slightly before relaxing and returning the embrace. "I missed you too, Weiss."
Weiss felt the metal of her prosthetic arm rest against the back of her head. "Where have you been, you dunce?"
"I could ask you the same thing." They parted after a few seconds and shared a smile. Yang looked over Weiss' shoulder and saw the looming armor, jumping back. "What is that?!"
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