When I woke up, I heard sounds in the kitchen. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Sun was sitting where I had been last night reading the news, and Neptune was wearing a white apron and standing at the stove, making scrambled eggs. As soon as I saw him with the apron I began laughing really hard, harder than I had in a long time. Sun began laughing too, and Neptune was blushing.
"Hey! It's practical, okay! Shut up!"
After I had finished laughing, I sat down next to Sun.
"Good morning, Monkey Boy." He glared at me over his newspaper.
"If you don't stop calling me that I'll start calling you Kitty." I mock gasped.
"You wouldn't!"
"Hey, Sun," Neptune interrupted, placing plates of scrambled eggs in front of each of us. "Show her what you saw in the news just now."
"Right." Sun said, flipping to a page in the paper. "Look." I looked at the page. Right there, in the middle of the page, was a picture of Ruby. Missing, the headline said. Ruby Rose Schnee, Reward: 10,000 Lien. Oh, no. I thought. What have I done?
"We have to find her!" I jumped up, nearly upsetting my plate.
"Woah! slow down, Blake!" Sun said, setting down the newspaper.
"We don't have the luxury to slow down. I need to find her. This is all my fault!" I ran back to the room I had slept in, grabbed my weapon, and headed towards the door, where I was stopped by Sun. "Get out of my way!"
"Blake, you're gonna get yourself killed. If we can't stop you, we're at least coming with you. Right, Neptune?" He looked meaningfully over my shoulder at his blue-haired partner. I turned around to see Neptune roll his eyes and begin taking off his apron.
"Fine. Of course we'll go with you, Blake. Let me grab my jacket and my weapon." I smiled at Sun.
"Thank you. I don't know what I'd do if Ruby got hurt. Weiss would track me to the ends of the earth and kill me." Neptune looked a little dreamy at the mention of Weiss' name, but Sun and I pretended not to notice.
Finally, Sun and Neptune were both ready. We headed over to a little coffee shop and sat down.
"So," Neptune said conversationally.
"Where should we start looking?" That was when I realized I had no idea.
"Um... Well, one of her favorite places to go is her mother's grave, on the cliffs on the edge of Vale. Why don't we start there?"
"Sounds good." Sun replied. We decided we'd get there by train. Sun wanted to just sneak aboard, which I would have been okay with, but Neptune put his foot down.
"You two may be okay with breaking the law, but I'm not. I'm paying for tickets." I just went along with it, arguing would have been a waste of time. I felt a little bit sick on the train, remembering the last time I had been on one. That had been about four months ago. The same amount of time since Ruby found me. Let's just say I was glad to get off. Safely. When we got to the station, we disembarked, and began walking towards the forest. While it had been sunny in Vale, it was a little colder up here. I was trained to withstand the cold, but Sun eventually had to button up his shirt, tucking his tail in.
"What's wrong? Abs can't handle the temperature?"
"I'm cold, okay! I don't like cold weather, it makes my tail hurt." As we walked through the forest, I thought about Ruby. She would have her hood to keep her warm, but I still worried. What if she ran into a large pack of Grimm? I knew she could probably take on an Alpha Beowolf no problem, maybe one or two good-size Ursai, but any more than that and she could get hurt or die. This was all my fault! All I could think about was how angry she had been. When I had been fighting her, that look in her silver eyes, that determination that was there even as she lost, looked so much like the no-longer-nameless woman I had watched die.
When we reached the cliff, there was a tall figure standing there. She had a cloak like Ruby's, but it was white. She turned around and looked at me. Her silver eyes were filled with sadness, and I gasped. Silver eyes.
I blinked, and the figure disappeared. But not before I heard a faint voice, so faint it was hard to make out.
I forgive you. Find my daughter, and keep her safe. I ran up to the edge of the cliff where she had been standing. There was a small stone with a symbol on it that reminded me of Ruby's. In it was inscribed
Summer Rose
Thus kindly I scatter
I kneeled in front of it. Who was the figure? It was possible that it was a Spectre, a fragment of a deceased person's aura left behind with a message. Yes, that had to be it. I'd recognize that face anywhere. I had seen a Spectre of Summer Rose. It took a lot of aura control to leave behind a Spectre, and I was in awe. I stared off the edge of the cliff for a few seconds, until Sun and Neptune caught up.
"She forgives me." I breathed. It felt like a huge, suffocating weight had been lifted off my back. Sun looked confused.
"Huh? Who forgives you? What happened?" I shook my head.
"Nothing. She's not here. Let's go check out around Vale." Sun shivered.
"Yes, let's. I'm freezing." Neptune nodded his head in agreement. Even I agreed. When we got back to Vale, we split up and began randomly checking shops. After a couple hours we regrouped for lunch. Suddenly I had an idea. There was only one thing Ruby loved as much as her family: Crescent Rose.
"The VCF!" I nearly shouted, startling the boys. Neptune's face lit up, but Sun looked confused.
"The what?" He tipped his head to the side, but Neptune slammed his hands on the table.
"Blake you're a genius!"
"Will somebody please explain? What is the VCF?" Sun set his fork down. Neptune calmed down a little, and explained.
"The Vale City Forge! The one thing Ruby loves as much as her sister is her weapon! I bet that's where she is!" Sun stood up, pushing his chair back.
"Well, let's go!" We got up, Neptune swiped his Lien card on the little machine on the way out the door, and we were on our way.
When we got there, the door was locked.
"Well," Neptune said. "Back to the drawing board."
"No, wait." I had seen something. A small rose petal on the window sill, right next to an open window. She had climbed in. I pointed it out.
"She must have really wanted to be left alone." Sun commented. I ignored him.
"Come on. We have to get her." I began scaling the wall, using the window sills to help me. Sun followed suit, using his monkey tail to help him along. When I got to the open sill, I looked back down to see where Neptune was, but he had disappeared. When I looked up again, he was already in the room. I decided not to ask about it and climbed in, then moved out of the way for Sun. When we were all inside, I said
"Okay. You two stay here. Call me if you see her. I'm gonna go look for her." They nodded. All the machines in here were aura operated, so she'd probably be hanging around the machines, sharpening her weapon. The lights were off, but being a Faunus, I could see just fine.
"Ruby!" I called out.
Yang P.O.V
"This is ridiculous," I muttered to myself as I got out of the car. "I'm a professional bodyguard, not a pet-sitter. Hired to protect the family cat! A job's a job, I guess, pays well too."
I remembered the conversation Mr. Schnee and I had. It went basically like this:
"Mrs. Xiao Long? You're hired."
"Sir? May I ask who I'm protecting?"
"My daughter's pet."
"She's a cat. That's all you need to know."
"Alright. Thank you sir."
I sighed and got my bag out of the trunk. I walked through the garden, and when I got to the front door, I opened it. Inside was the famous older sister of the Schnee family, Weiss. Her hair was messed up, and she looked exhausted.
"Who in remnant are you?" She asked.
"Yang Xiao Long. Bodyguard."
"Well, your charge is missing, and my sister's gone too. Come on, we're gonna go find them." She grabbed my wrist, and I was tempted to activate my gauntlets, if only to dislodge her. I decided that was a bad idea, however, and refrained from doing it. I let her drag me back to the car. This was just going fantastic. I hadn't even seen the animal and we were already searching for her, and the younger sister. We looked all over Vale, and after a few hours of searching, we came to a large building that was apparently the City Forge. It was closed for whatever reason, but Weiss swore she could feel her sister's aura inside. We looked around and tried to find any way in, short of breaking down the doors. There was a window, but it was too high for either of us to reach. That was when we saw the flames. The window shades had been down, but the fire had eaten away at one, and we could see that the inside of the building was on fire, and some of it was collapsing.
"RUBY" Weiss screamed. Out of the window I had seen earlier, I saw a guy with a white unbuttoned shirt, jeans, and blonde hair leap out the window. He caught a nearby tree branch and descended to the ground. A tall guy with blue hair spontaneously appeared next to us. He was holding an unconscious Ruby in his arms. He mumbled something that sounded like Blake's name and passed out, dropping the already unconscious Ruby to the ground. Weiss lifted them both up on her glyphs, looking confused.
"Neptune? Ruby? What-" the blonde guy ran over to us. We'll explain later! Blake's still in there, she's stuck! And now we don't have Neptune to teleport her out!" So that was what happened. I grinned. My turn.
"Don't worry, guys, I'll get her!"
They turned to me.
"No!" Weiss said. "You'll just get yourself killed!"
"No I won't. Haven't you ever heard the old saying?"
"What saying?"
"Fight fire with fire." And with that, I set myself ablaze. I felt my eyes turn red.
"Oh dusts!" Sun swore, jumping backwards. "Could you warn us next time you do that?" I ignored him, activating my gauntlets and punching the doors open. I may be flame-retardant, but I can't breathe smoke. I pulled my orange scarf up over my mouth and ran through the building, searching for a humanoid shape. I finally found her. She was barely conscious, trapped under a piece of the ceiling that had fallen in. I felt like I recognized her from somewhere, but it was hard to see anything in all the fire and smoke. I wedged myself under the giant chunk of ceiling and pushed with all my strength, slowly moving it off of her. She opened her eyes and looked at me, squinting. I realized that it was because by this point I was probably glowing brighter than the flames around me, but I didn't care. I picked her up, bridal style, and I ran through the building, with parts of the floor collapsing behind me.
I toned down my fire, I didn't want to blind the girl. That's when she opened her eyes fully. That beautiful Amber color... Now I knew where I had seen her before. In the alley, when I had saved her from Junior. I saw a flash of confusion in her face, and I knew that she recognized me too.
"Yang?..." That's when I saw that her bow had fallen off, and there was a pair of soft black cat ears underneath (although I couldn't tell if they were black from the soot or if they were naturally like that).
"Hey kitty cat. You gotta stop getting yourself in trouble. Not that I'm tired of rescuing you." She managed a slight scowl.
"Don't call me that." And then she started coughing. I pulled her own black scarf over her mouth and nose. We made it out of the building just before it collapsed. Blake had passed out, and I was coughing my throat raw, but we had made it. I set Blake down on another of Weiss' glyphs, then deactivated my semblance. Then, tired, I wandered over to the grass and collapsed next to where Weiss had set Ruby and Neptune. I closed my eyes, then I sensed Weiss setting Blake down next to me. Then I passed out myself.
So. Yang. I know I usually release these in the evenings, but I was eager to post this chapter. By the way, I discovered this morning that the last names for the rest of team CFVY have been officially released. Coco Adel, Fox Alistair, and Yatsuhashi Daichi. Just thought I'd stick that in. Let me know if I screwed something up. Anyways, thanks for reading, see you all next chapter!