A/N: More plot! This chapter should be a rather interesting experiment for me since I will be writing from Blake's perspective on the last chapter. With that said, let's get started.
Chapter 20: is only through the
~Blake POV 1st person (This should be interesting.)
I sighed as I put down my book. 'Great. Now I'm out of books to read.' I thought to myself as I got up from my bed. I looked around the room that we used while Soap and the others deemed it necessary for us to stay at the church, not that I minded. The room was rather spacious compared to our dorm at Beacon and had it's own bathroom and shower, which in itself was rather large. To be completely honest, I liked staying at the church better than staying at Beacon. Especially since it had the added benefit of having all four of our beds planted securely on the ground.
As I headed to my bookshelf to put away my book, I remembered the name of a book that Soap had suggested to me a while back. "The Exception" if I remembered correctly. I didn't bother looking for it on my bookshelf; I knew I didn't have it, but I did know a place that did.
I grabbed my keys off my dresser and started toward the door. I was about to cross the boundary of the room when out of the corner of my eye I saw Ruby and Weiss sitting on their beds, presumably doing homework. Yang on the other hand was nowhere to be seen, probably fighting Sam and Drake again. She had been trying to beet them for several weeks now and was spending every chance she got fighting them.
"Hey Weiss, Ruby. I'm headed into Vale to pick up a few things, you guys need anything while I'm there?" I asked.
Ruby looked like she was about to speak when Weiss cut her off, "I think we're good for the time being. We'll see you when you get back."
I rolled my eyes. I knew what Ruby wanted which was the very reason why Weiss cut her off. "Alright, then I'll see you guys later." I said as I disappeared through the doorway and made my way to the garage.
As I entered the garage, I thought through the events of the previous month. Soap, on one of his breaks from trying to find Regal, saw it necessary for us to learn how to drive; so, being the multi-millionaire that he is, bought us all cars which he then gave to us upon completion of our Driver's Test. Ruby's was a red themed 2015 Ford Mustang, Weiss's was a white 2014 Buick Verano, Yang's was a yellow 2015 Corvette with black detailing, and finally, mine was a black themed 2014 Dodge Challenger with chrome and grey detailing. Unlike the other cars, and to my pleasure, mine was a convertible.
I smiled at the memory of Weiss complaining that Ruby was too young to drive. Soap's counter argument had two parts; one, Soap and his team are active bounty hunters which meant that, in some ways, they above the law. And two; Soap had friends in the VPD and was able to pull a few strings in order to gain permission from the police chief to allow all of team RWBY, legally able to drive or not, to obtain driver's licenses. Needless to say that Weiss did not win that argument with Soap.
Pushing the memories aside, I unlocked the door to my car and got in. Putting the keys in the ignition, I turned them and started the only thing in the world that I would ever allow to be compared to a cat; my car.
The car now started, and purring loudly, I started toward Vale.
Arriving at my destination, Tukson's Book Trade, I parked my car and entered the store.
The owner, Tukson, was an old friend of mine from my days in the White Fang, and knowing him, he would have what I was looking for.
As I entered the store, I heard a bell ring.
"Welcome to Tukson's Book Trade. Home to every book under the sun. I'll be out in a minute to help you." I heard a familiar voice say from behind a set of closed doors behind the counter. Within a minute, the owner came out from behind the counter carrying two large stacks of books and placed them on the counter. "How may I-" He looked up, "Oh, hey Blake. What can I get you?"
"Hey Tukson. I'm actually looking for a book that a friend of mine suggested to me. I think he said it was called The Exception or something like that." I said.
"Who is this he that you speak of? Has Blake run off and gotten herself a boyfriend? Hmm?" He said with a smile.
I could feel my cheeks run hot at his comment. "It's nothing like that!"
He laughed again. "Your reaction says otherwise."
"If you must know, he is an Instructor from Beacon." I said, hoping that he would drop the subject. "Plus he already has a girlfriend."
"Whatever. Your 'friend' must be rather intelligent and into old literature if he's read The Exception and liked it." He said, finally calming down.
"Do you have it?" I asked, getting a little impatient.
"Yeah, I have it." He held up the book and set it down on the counter. "So, does this 'friend' of yours have a name?" He asked.
"Soap."
"That's it?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"Ok.." He said, obviously not believing me. "You said that he's an Instructor from Beacon not a Professor, that means that he has a job other than Beacon. What does he do?"
"You know, it just hit me. He works, but he really doesn't need to." I said.
"Why's that?"
"He's Remnant's youngest millionaire, and yet he says he doesn't care about money. To answer your question though, he's a bounty hunter."
"Cool. Well he sounds interesting, I can see why you fell for him." I felt my cheeks run red at his statement, to which he just laughed. "Bring him by sometime, I'd love to meet him."
"Bye Tukson." I said as I grabbed the book and left the store.
Outside the store, I stopped and took a breath of relief. That's when I noticed two objects moving in the alley. With me being my curious self, I investigated.
As I approached the objects, I could see that they were two faunas, about a year younger than me. To me it looked like they were digging through trash cans.
This hit a chord with me. I began to recall all the nights I had to go hungry because my parents couldn't get jobs to feed me. I've seen enough faunas go hungry in my lifetime. I decided to talk to them.
"Sarah?" I heard a male voice ask as I got close enough for them to see me. "Sarah 'Hearts' Kirtsov?"
"No sorry. " He hung his head. "What are you doing?" I asked them. Now that I was closer, I took a good look at the two faunas.
They looked to be about the same age, twins maybe. The guy that had spoke was a crow faunas and appeared to be about 5 foot 6, a little shorter than Soap, and had royal blue eyes and blackish-blue hair that reached his shoulders. On his cheeks were two nasty looking scars, maybe some sort of bullet wound. Everything - his shirt, his pants, and his shoes - he had on him was either navy blue or a shade darker. I could tell just from his build that he had seen a couple of fights in his lifetime.
The girl behind him was a raven faunas. She was about 5 foot 1, and had deep violet eyes and raven-black, shoulder length hair. To me, she looked like a faunas and black themed version of Ruby; cloak included.
"Getting dinner." He said sourly. Probably because I had my bow on and looked human.
I watched them for a few more minutes before I spoke again. "Out of curiosity; If I were to offer you a bed, a shower, and three square meals a day, all for free, would you take it?" I asked.
"Why? Are you offering?" The crow faunas asked.
"Yes; but I do have a couple questions for you." I said.
"There's always a catch." The crow faunas said nearly monotonously.
"Relax. I just want to know if you two are brother and sister, your names, and how you know my Beacon Instructor." I said.
"My name's Shade Tenebris and this is my sister Umbra. As for Sarah, I worked with her a few times while I was a mercenary. Does that answer your questions?" Shade asked.
"Indeed it does. Ready to go?" I asked.
Shade did double take, "You were serious?" He asked incredulously.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I said.
"Because, you're a human. Why would you care about what happens to a faunas?"
I could feel the ends of my lips curl upwards into a grin, "Who said I was a human?" I asked as I twitched the cat ears that were hiding inside the black bow atop my head.
Shade stared at the twitching bow for a few seconds before putting two and two together. He turned to his sister, "Umbra, let's go grab our things. We'll be back shortly." He said, turning to leave.
I sent Soap a message on my scroll while I waited.
'Hey Soap. I found a pair of faunas, a brother and sister, digging through some trash cans behind a building. After talking to them, I found out that they are currently homeless and are literally about to starve to death. Do you mind if I offer them a place to stay at the church?'
~Blake
I sent the message and got a reply quickly.
'What are their names?'
~Soap
I replied.
'Shade and Umbra Tenebris. Apparently Shade knew Sarah at one point in her life. Said that he worked with her several times as a mercenary. I'll leave the rest of his story for later, too much to type. See you at the church.'
~Blake
I got a reply 'Sure.' along with directions to an empty room in the church.
I looked up to my two shadows and said, "Let's go."
When we got back to the church, I showed them to, what would be, their room and handed them a change of clothes and pointed them to the nearest shower.
While they were cleaning up, I had Bucky make two sandwiches which I left in their room along with instructions for them to go to the sanctuary when they could so that they could meet Soap.
With nothing else for me to do but wait, I went back to my room and started reading The Exception.
And I kept reading until I heard a voice shouting my name down the hallway. Irritated that I wouldn't be able to read any further in my book until the noise went away, I got up to see what all the commotion was about.
I opened the door to reveal a 16 year old kid that was moving too damn fast for me to see anything else about him.
"What's wrong?" I asked rather dryly.
"Soap and Sarah just collapsed in the main lobby." The kid said.
This alarmed me. I took off in a sprint to the lobby to find Soap and Sarah on the ground, wearing different outfits? The clothes can come later Blake, physical wellbeing first! I thought to myself as I rush to Soap as he struggled to try and stand. I grabbed his shoulders to help him up. Instead, he turned to look at me. "Are you alright?" I asked as I helped him stand and led him toward one of the chairs on the side of the room.
"I'll be fine, I've been through worse." He said with a slight chuckle. "That's more than I can say for Sarah though."
"I see. Any idea what happened?" I asked. Why is he always joking about serious matters? I thought to myself.
"Actually, yeah. I have a pretty good idea. It involves that guy that you found today, Shade." Soap said. What?
"What about him?" I asked.
"Something in his and Sarah's past, that - I think - led to Sarah ending her career as a mercenary. Something that she had locked away within her own mind to keep from feeling the pain." He said. "Where's Shade? I need to talk to him."
"Sanctuary. Do you need help getting there?" I asked.
"No, I'll just teleport there. Get Sarah to our room and set her down on our bed." Soap said.
"Sure thing." I said as I picked Sarah up, fireman style, and started down the hallway towards their room.
"And Blake," I stopped and turned around, "There are a lot of things in our room that you won't understand. I don't care if you look at them or go through the papers and books, but unless it's a book or a document, please refrain from touching things."
I nodded and resumed heading towards their room.
I opened the door to Soap's room and spotted a bed in the corner and headed toward it. I carefully laid her down on the bed, when I did, a screen that was hung above their bed turned on showing Sarah's aura level. Needless to say that it was very low. I watched the bar for a while as it slowly increased. After I was satisfied with her aura level, I took a look around the room.
Soap was right, there are a lot of things in here that I don't understand. Technology covered the room.
In, perhaps the cleanest of the corners of the room were eight screens hung on the wall. Seven of them were black, but one was lit up. I realized that all of the monitors were connected to a computer. I looked closer at the screen that was lit up. On it was a reminder that said "Need to update Bounty Files." I looked around the room and eventually found the files the note was talking about. As I was about to open the folders, I thought aloud, "Just who are you chasing Soap?"
A/N: Why I found that chapter so hard to write will never be known to me. Also hey, Blake has fallen for Soap. This may or may not cause problems for him in the future, but we'll see.
I hope you guys enjoyed.
Until next time, I'm SoapiestAuto780, and I'm out.
See ya guys.
Edit: If you are wondering why the 6th scene (the second to last scene) doesn't match what happened during the last chapter, here's an explanation: When some chapters are being told from different perspectives, they are being told as that character remembers it.
Another way of putting it:
If the dialog and details change from perspective to perspective, it's because each character notices different things more than another character would and because of this each character will remember things a little differently.
Soap, while not a faunus, will pay a little more attention to what he's hearing than what he sees. With that said, if he sees something wrong, he's not going to ignore it. Soap, as well as myself in real life, has a tendency to listen to the things around him as opposed to what's right in front of him. The real life reason for this is that I work as a stock clerk in a grocery store and we are trained to ignore the sounds of working and everyday life happening right next to us and listen for the sound of either a panicked customer a few aisles over or someone pulling an entire shelf of product into a basket to try to walk out the door without paying.
On the other hand, Sarah - even though she's a faunus - will actually pay attention to what she's looking at and usually only listen to the things happening a few feet out from her unless she's focusing. The reason for this was just to have a contrast between Soap and Sarah.
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