Chapter 11: A woeful time
The industrial portion of Vale was quiet as the mist filled air drifted gently over the mostly derelict and not entirely unoccupied area.
Amidst the crates and containers, between the warehouses and store rooms, a small band of highly determined looking individuals carried a large, cylindrical container between the four of them, whilst two others looked on.
"Careful, now, men, can't have this being dropped, can we?" Informed one of these onlookers, who, if a reader were to be watching, could identify the figure as Entropy, accompanied by Agony, and four lesser beings in thrall to their cause.
"No sir! Not at all sir!" Shouted one of the men to him on cue, and all the other man also shouted "Yessir!" in a manner of someone who believes volume equates to loyalty.
"Good, good" Entropy said, and cast his gaze out over the mist filled area. There was supposed to be a truck here waiting for them to take this…where was it?
Removing his jewel from his armour, Entropy sent out a telepathic question to Hatred.
"Where is the truck? Your late" He snapped in his mind. The response came through slowly.
"There has been an incident with traffic. I'll be delayed" Came the blunt reply.
Agony saddled over closer to Entropy.
"Where is he?" She whispered in annoyance. Entropy was about to mutter something about traffic and the idiocy of Hatred when someone-no, multiple someone's stepped out of the shadow.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Came the mocking voice of a man who knows he has more men with more guns the next party. Stepping out of the mist came the infamous criminal mastermind Roman Torchwick, with a group of criminals toting guns in tow. Most interestingly there was also a young woman of short stature holding a parasol in hand, her mismatched hair and sharp features immediately drawing the eyes of Agony.
Oh, pay attention please. Entropy complained internally, slapping her arm to get her to focus on the business at hand.
"This is just a little delivery of ours to some business partners. Nothing that would bother you, or your men" Entropy explained, gesturing to the cylindrical container large enough for two men to lie face down, head to toe, within.
Roman stepped forward, using his hired goons to push aside the labour of the two cult members so he could see the container better.
"Well, that's were your wrong. You see, everything that goes on down here concerns me" He replied, before gesturing for one of his men to open it. He stepped back and pointed his cigar at Entropy.
"I believe a friend of yours killed some of my men. Do I get compensation?" He asked, snuffing his cigar out on Entropy's chest plate. Wiping the ash off his armour, Entropy removed his mask so he could speak clearly to Roman.
"Depends." He said simply. Agony had also removed her mask, and was freeing her flowing orange hair from her robes, winking at Neo, who rolled her eyes. Roman didn't seem amused with this reply.
"With what?" He asked, looking back to check the progress on the container, and, seeing that his men were to still trying to force it open, he pointed at Neo to move them along.
"Well...no…you really won't, I'm afraid." Aaron replied, as Romans men finally wrenched the container open. Five long metal rods lay within. Roman turned his back on Aaron and went over to the container, and looked at the rods.
"What are these?" He mused, prodding them with his cane. Ms. Dutch was still smiling at Neo, causing her to look awkwardly away, unused to receiving such close attention in public. Ms. Dutch sniggered at this. Roman removed a rod and examined it top to bottom.
"Would you enlighten me on the purpose of these rods?" He asked, turning to Aaron, who shook his head. "You really wouldn't understand" He stated.
Roman scoffed, and threw it back inside the container roughly, causing a loud clang. The pole glowed fractionally, but this went unnoticed by Roman, whose attention was now wholly fixed on Aaron.
"Well, I know someone who might. She'll be very interested in this little find, won't she, Neo?" Roman said, tilting his head slightly towards Neo. As if by some que, the groups broke out into spontaneous fighting. Roman hefted his cane to fire a shot off, but found Aarons had vanished into a pile of leaves. Neo pirouetted and went for a side kick on Agony, who, in a feat of unnatural swiftness, caught her leg mid kick and threw it aside. The gangsters with Roman opened fire, and the men with Aaron and Ms. Dutch ducked and ran for cover before returning fire. Roman spun around to see Aaron go in for a punch, and deftly sidestepped, only to see him disappear again. Roman was unsure what was going on when he was hit in the back by a blow, then felt himself get covered in leaves. Again, Aaron reappeared in front of him and landed a series of blows on Roman, before teleporting away to face one of Romans exposed sides. Each volley of blows met zero resistance as Roman struggled to keep track of where the blows where coming from.
Neo, meanwhile, was engaged in a game with Ms. Dutch. Neo went in for kicks and strikes with her parasol, which Agony deftly avoided, then followed through with punches and kicks of her own, forcing Neo to move side to side to dodge the rain of strikes. Neo jumped into the air and over Ms. Dutch, landing behind her and going in for a kick to the head, but Agony merely smiled and stepped fractionally back, the heel of Neo's foot passing by inches from her head. Ms. Dutch moved in and feinted several blows, then made a real one, out of sync with the previous ones. Neo, adapted to the pattern so far, took the hit to her ribs as it appeared out of nowhere. Stepping deftly in, Ms. Dutch grabbed Neo by her arm and pulled her in and to the side, close enough for Neo to smash Ms. Dutch in the stomach with her parasol. Neo would've followed through with a hyper fast series of blows if Ms. Dutch reacted, but instead she smiled, the pain and impact entirely ignored.
"You're such a little cutie" Ms. Dutch said flirtatiously to Neo, who frowned and drove forward. Ms. Dutch raised her elbow in the path of Neo, causing her to duck low at the last moment, interrupting her attack. Ms. Dutch spinned around and raised her left leg to trip Neo, who merely turned the fall into a front flip.
"I'll like to see you do that in the bedroom" Ms. Dutch smiled, and drew a curved blade, a flaying knife, from her belt. Neo responded in kind by drawing her needle thin rapier.
Elsewhere, Roman managed to break the endless hail of blows with a lucky hit with his cane, and now he was pushing Aaron back. But Roman knew this felt to easy. Aaron could simply teleport away…why, then…was he backing off with each blow, leaping back with a smile on his face.
Roman decided not to find out and fired off several shots at the annoying upstart, who then vanished in a flurry of leaves once more.
"Curse these bloody kids" Roman snapped to himself, looking around for where his competitor could have gone now. Sensing movement behind him, he spun around and caught sight of his foe, raising his arms…revealing…wrist mounted machine pistols. Of course. Anyone who was crazy enough to fight like these people would have crazy ass weapons.
Aaron raised his fists, or, more specifically, the two automatic machine pistols he had installed in wrist braces. Their black and grey metal tone contrasted with his green armour plating sharply, but not as sharply as the vambrace blades which ran along the width of his forearm.
"Oh c'mon!" Roman protested as Aaron smiled fiendishly, before opening fire. The rounds were individually quite weak, but the sheer mass of them forced Roman to jump behind a crate for cover. As he did this, the murderous hail of gunfire stopped as Aaron reloaded, the clips ejecting sideways out of the guns, as he reached to his belt to insert fresh ones. However, Roman would not let such an opportunity go amiss, and so, peaking out from his cover, he fired off several return shots of his own. Aaron leapt aside to avoid the blows, before he placed the second clip in and returned fire once more.
As this was going on, Neo and Ms. Dutch were continuing to outdo each other in a series of elegant kicks, punches, hand strikes, jumps, flips and displays of acrobatic nonsense. Ms. Dutch still kept on flirting with her the whole time, much to Neo's annoyance.
"C'mon, how about a kiss?" Ms. Dutch asked sweetly, extending her hand for Neo to take. Diving forward with her rapier extended, Neo sidestepped her foes exposed arm and moved in for the lethal blow, when Ms. Dutch did something she would previously thought to be impossible.
Agony reached out and grabbed the needle thin blade whilst moving calmly aside. Her weapons blade cut through the material of Agony's glove, tearing it and causing a line of blood to appear along her exposed palm, but Ms. Dutch merely smiled, and yanked the blade closer to her, pulling it so fast that Neo came along with, crashing into her opponents chest. Ms. Dutch wrapped an arm around Neo's neck and pulled her in closer.
Neo thought she was going to die, and tried to free herself, but her foes grip was like iron. She feared what would come next when Ms. Dutch did something entirely unexpected. She pulled Neo in and kissed her. On the lips.
Throwing the stunned Neo backwards to regain her dignity and composure, Ms. Dutch sniggered at her discomfort and alarm before calling out to her.
"You should've seen that coming, someone as cute as you!" She yelled, bowing. Neo was about to move forward with murder in her heart when an explosion rocked the area. Everyone looked around for the source, which revealed itself in the form of a truck ramming aside a shipping container, one of the people within it firing a grenade launcher wildly whilst yelling incoherently. Hatred was behind the wheel.
Turning the truck rapidly into a semi-power slide he rammed aside a clustered gaggle of Romans criminal men, and then disembarked by kicking the door of the cabin. Staff in hand, Hatred leapt onto the ground, releasing a shockwave in all directions.
"Ha-ha!" Aaron shouted smugly, and teleported in front of Roman, punching him in the jaw before teleporting to the container to retrieve the rods.
"Agony, it's time to come back!" Aaron called in a singsong voice.
Ms. Dutch, just beginning to feel the build-up of power, decided to do so before she butchered this delightful little opponent of hers.
"Well, my dear, it has been a pleasure. Perhaps we should get to know each other some other way?" She laughed, and threw something at Neo, who instinctively caught it mid-air. It was a ball of paper. Blowing a kiss to her, Ms. Dutch laughed all the way to the truck, where Hatred and Aaron where waiting.
"Well, it was lovely meeting you. I hope we meet again!" Called Roman sarcastically after the group as they retrieved their items and then vanished as one whole by Aaron teleporting them away. Neo, meanwhile, unfolded the piece of paper.
It had a phone number on it, captioned "Text me babe".
Not wanting to lose track of her new No.1 Most Hated Rival, she tucked it into her pocket, sheathed her Rapier, and went to join Roman, her thoughts occupied entirely by that arrogant, annoying, violent girl who mocked Neo in the most infuriating way.
She would find her. And then get answers.
Starting with: "Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?"
XXX
Several days after the little dispute between Solaris and Blake, in which Blake texted JNPR that Solaris liked to take things "lying down" so to speak, which had arisen after an interrupted session between him and Yang (on Blake' bed, of all places), which caused Solaris to return the gesture of screwing the other over by calling Blake a "slippery little bitch", which in turn devolved unfathomably into an argument between the two over Dust and Fire and which character was better, or who deserved to die, etc etc, causing all the other people to lose interest in the debate as to whether Solaris admitted to being the passive one (Yang, unhelpfully, neither denied nor confirmed this) in bed and gain interest in this series which the two seemed to enthralled by.
"Guys? Guys? GUYS!" Yelled Yang as Blake and Solaris shot some remarks back and forth about house Stake and house lunnister, followed by insults like "Headless" or "Twincest".
No one really understood what these remarks meant, but they meant to find out.
"Yes?" Solaris said at once, responding instantly to Yang, causing Blake to further believe Solaris (accidental) statement.
"What the hell are you two on about?" She demanded, and Weiss nodded.
"Dust and Fire, the fantasy series of books about the fictional land of-" Blake begun, but was cut short by Yang waving her hand in the air from atop her bunk.
"Right!" She shouted. "You've been on about it for months! And we have no idea what you are talking about! So, in the interest of team spirit, and understanding, would it be possible for us to…you know…watch this…together…because I am sure as hell not reading a book bigger than our textbooks." Yang said.
"Well, actually there are at least 5 books, but two are split into two parts each, so-" Solaris started, but stopped when Yang looked sternly at him.
"Then I am definitely not reading them!" She expanded. Blake rummaged through some stuff and pulled out a DVD box.
"Here it is. Dust and Fire, Season 1" She proclaimed, raising it above her head like a holy relic. Which, to her and Solaris, it kind of was. Weiss, however, looked at the rating and declared that it wasn't fit for Ruby.
"Why nooooooooooot?" She complained, using her puppy dog eyes on everyone in the room, most notably Yang, the person whose permission she most needed.
"Sexual content" Blake stated bluntly.
"Oh. Ewwwww, gross" She spluttered, red faced.
"Maybe when your older" Yang said, patting her on the back. "So, where are we going to watch it?" She said, forgetting about her sister.
"Yang! You can't just leave her by herself while we go watch this!" Weiss said, outraged that Yang would leave Ruby alone.
"Well, if we watch an episode a day, it is an hour a night. She can stay here and do homework and we can watch it in JNPR's dorm" Blake said, and Solaris nodded. "I am aware that Ren and Nora are huge fans. Jaune and Pyrrha haven't read or watched it, so it can be like a huge movie watching night!" Of course, no one who has read the books really thought this. What they thought was:
"Ah yes, fresh blood and minds to destroy and devour as their faith and love gets crushed and destroyed brutally as their favourite characters die horrendously and go unavenged. I shall draw power from their suffering! Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Solaris smiled internally and glanced at Blake, who had this sly smile as she watched Yang and Weiss head over to the dorm room. Before she left, Blake looked at Ruby.
"You sure you'll be ok?"
Ruby nodded, and held up a weapons booklet.
"I can pass the time easily!" She beamed, and Blake nodded, smiling, and closed the door.
And so it begins.
XXX
BA-BA-BADA BA-BA BADA BA-BA BADA BA BA-BA BADA BA-BA BADA BA-BA BADA BAAAAAA-BAAAAAAAAAA BADAAAAAAAAAAA BAAAAAAAAAAAA BAAAAAAAAAA BA-BA BA-BA BA-BA BADA BA-BA BADA BA-BA BADA BA-BA…
The iconic theme of Dust and Ice rang loud in the dorm room, as the two teams (minus Ruby) watched on. Sitting on the beds were Nora and Ren, with Nora holding a bowel of popcorn in one hand and a full bottle of soft drink in the other. Ren had his hands in his lap, ready to restrain her if need be. Pyrrha and Jaune sat at the foot of another her bed, looking intently at the screen. Weiss had taken a seat all for herself and Blake was lying contently on the floor, whilst Solaris had lined up a chair for Yang, who pushed him into then sat on his lap, to the others, (mostly Blake's) amusement.
The screen showed the vast geography of the world, from the city of Kings Arrival to Winterfall, to the Barrier in the far north, and across the Thin Sea to Pentus.
Solaris wrapped his arms around Yang's waist as she leant back in his embrace, and watched the show as one. The episode progressed to show Winterfall, the home of House Stake, Gaurdians of the North.
Burrrrrrrr-bur-bur bur burburbur. Burrrrrrrrrr ne-ner-ne. Neh neh neh nehnerneh nehhhhhhh. Burrrrrrrrr BUR-BUR-BURBURBUR. BURRRRRRRRRRRR BUR-BUR-BURBURBUR.
The low, mournful theme of House Stake and the North filled the room, the slow, sad music making them all fall silent. The one improvement that cannot be denied the shows had over the books was the music.
The group watched, enthralled in experiencing the story for the first time, or seeing it again, but enthralled nonetheless in the majesty of the story, the depth of the world, the very real feelings that pervaded the world depicted on screen.
They were still in silence until the scene with the Dire Hounds, where Weiss, of all people, unexpectedly went "Ahhhh" in a soft crooning voice at the sight of the wolf pups.
Blake looked at her with a funny expression before returning her attention to the screen.
They watched in raptured silence, with Pyrrha wincing at the treatment of the silver haired princess, Daenaries, by her brother, Visaries, and later on at the wedding between her and Khal Drogoe. Yang whispered something into Solaris ear about Daenaries, and he smiled before whispering something back, to which she giggled.
Blake watched the exchanged and smirked to herself, her imagination running wild with the ideas Yang might get from watching this show…as might she. Reading it was one thing, seeing it another…and, sure, she had seen it before, but with other people…well. More opportunity, you know?
Finally, the episode neared its end, with Brun climbing the tower, and seeing something he was not meant to see. Weiss let out a horrified gasp when she put two and two together and came up with four, and Pyrrha's eyes widened. Jaune seem pretty nonplussed, but he did appear to be trying hard to keep his expression neutral. Nora and Ren, having seen this before, where not at all worried by it.
The real shock came when one of the people involved in the scandal, the brother, moved over to Brun, helped him up through the window, and appeared, just for a moment, to look as if he was going to help.
"He is going to blackmail him into not talking, isn't he?" Yang whispered, and Solaris shook his head. "Not quite." He replied.
"The things I do for love" Said the brother on screen, and pushed Brun from the window. Yang shot up and Weiss went "AH!" in surprise.
The others who had not seen it reacted as one would expect people to react when they see a ten year old get pushed from a window by a knight of high nobility who is apparently engaged in incestuous relations with his twin sister, the queen.
"What…was…that?" Weiss said slowly, dreading what other horrors lay before them.
"A pretty uneventful episode" Solaris said, and Blake nodded.
Blake thinks she can laugh at their reactions, but she is so close to the chapter where her favourite current character will meet his end! Ha ha! Solaris laughed internally.
"That was…dark" Pyrrha summarised, and Jaune nodded.
"A good kind of dark. You get bored of hearing about the stories where the heroes always get it nice and easy" He said, to much general surprise. People didn't expect Jaune the type to enjoy dark stories.
Solaris continue to laugh evilly in his mind as the group discussed what they had just seen. Yang looked to Blake then back to Solaris before she picked up the DVD, a determined look in her eye to find out what had happened.
"So…episode 2 anyone?" She said, and the whole room agreed to one more hour of viewing. Solaris smiled as Yang relaxed back into his arms once more, Nora's popcorn bowl in hand. The two enjoyed each-others fine company throughout the remainder of the viewing, in blissful silence and comfort. Solaris wished to remain here forever.
A/N: Yeah. Lots of A Song of Ice and Fire puns and renames, I know. But hey, it wouldn't be exactly the same now, would it? Got to have some imagination for the sake of a joke.
Also, the Neo/Dutch thing will definitely continue. I enjoyed writing that too much to stop there, since I've seen a lot of memes where people have captioned Neo flirting with Yang in their fight in Volume 2 and I thought it would be hilarious if there was someone who did it to her instead, someone who is just as crazy and violent to boot. Ms. Dutch exists not as an anti-Neo, more of a different take on a similar premise. Mostly.
And no, neither Roman nor Neo was actually beaten in that fight. It ended before a conclusive winner was determined. I don't won't my villains to negate the canon villain's menace and power. My fights should be unpredictable, or at least somewhat fair. No OC curb stomping the real characters without effort.
Aside from Death.
As always, I would love reviews! Tell me what you liked, what background things you want to see, etc. More side characters? Team CFVY, maybe? Cinder meeting one of my OC villains? White Rose? More Neo and Dutch?
These are the things I have not really thought of…