Now that we're in an actual city, I'm finding myself with access to things like paper again. It's been nine months since I last wrote anything. I think.
Yeah, it's been nine months, I just checked a calendar. Things have changed since then, but I wouldn't say that those changes have been for the better.
I don't know when, I found out three months ago, but at some point Ruby read my last diary entry. She called me out on what was in it. About the very last part. I should have been mad, but I thought that maybe… when she heard how unhappy I was… that she might try to be, I don't know, different. More like my old Ruby. But she didn't take it that way.
Instead, she decided that my note just signaled we needed a change of pace.
It's the dead of winter now, and even though it's been mild this year, it's also been far too long. We're three months in, and I don't see it getting any warmer anytime soon. Winter always brings more death. Food shortages, unstable settlements, dangerous starving psychopaths roaming the streets and roads, desperate for supplies. We all kill more in the winter. We're all on edge when we're already half frozen.
Usually Ruby and I travel north this time of year, towards the equator, trying to get a little closer to the sun's warmth and the oceans But this isn't an idea for just us. All of us wanderers do this, and it brings thousands of humans, all itching to fight, closer together.
Ruby decided that instead of just hiding like we usually do during these months, we should use the winter's chaos to our advantage. We traveled to Caric, one of the hand full of actually functioning cities on this continent, and we found those in charge of the underground. I thought we were just going on a raid when we entered the back alley warehouse. We'd done it before. Locate a storehouse, sneak in, steal as much as we can, and then fight our way out. It worked well in the past, minus the one time Ruby got shot in the leg and we were forced to lay low for a few solid weeks while it healed. But when Ruby stood in front of the guy in charge, she instead made an application. Our names were well-known in this part of the rotting heap of a world, and she wanted a roof over our heads in exchange for our service.
It was horrifying. I'd seen her do it before, but usually she at least looked conflicted over what she was about to do. The head honcho, Bradley, told us 'I'd be more than happy to employee you both, the two famous berserkers. But unfortunately we have no room for you now. I'm fully staffed at this particular moment, but I'd have no reason to not hire you if I did have the room'.
Ruby understood what he was implying before anyone else did. She had always been a quick thinker. Before anyone else caught his double meaning, Ruby walked over to the corner where two gambling men weren't paying close attention, and held a gun to the back of the dealer's head. She executed them both, one shot in the back of the head, the other through the eye. She shot them with my gun, and then gave it back to me as though nothing had happened.
The two men she killed, who I found out later were Bradley's lieutenants, were both tasked with enforcing Bradley's control over the city. I guess we took that job when Ruby took their lives. Bradley wasn't even mad; he found Ruby's open display of violence interesting. No, interesting isn't strong enough of a word. Intoxicating? Yeah, intoxicating is the word I'm looking for. We've put our lives in the hands of a drunk. What sane leader is okay with his two main men are just slaughtered in cold blood?! But that only meant that when someone else better than us comes along… well, he'll probably want a really good show when that day comes along, maybe give the two to replace us the jump on us or something.
We've been doing odd jobs for Bradley. A vandalism here, a menacing threat there. I tend to handle the former, and I leave Ruby to do the latter. We work together on all of the projects, but Ruby always finds petty vandalism boring, and pushes those jobs off on me. And I'll admit it, I'm not intimidating in the slightest when I'm standing next to Ruby. She just oozes menacing vibes lately, and it's easy to see she's got a screw or two loose.
I hate it. I'm no petty criminal. I shouldn't need to go around busting knee caps and holding people up at knife point, telling them to get off our turf. It sound's childish, but I'd say life at the moment is pretty shitty.
The worst thing though, that makes every part of this worse? Ruby thinks she did that for me.
Somewhere, in her twisted mind, she thinks I would want this!? She didn't get rid of the silence! She only replaced it with senseless violence! And over what?! We kill people, who have loved ones and families just like me, over mere inches of territory! Back alleys, side streets. Little things, all of which mean nothing in the grand scheme to anyone! All of our fighting is just a pissing contest between Bradley and the other kingpins, and I'm sure they don't give a shit over the lives their ending! I don't want to live if it means I'm making other people die!
I'm not going to keep doing this for much longer. I'll give her one week, and either she'll be able to see my sadness, or I'm leaving her behind. I can't hold out on her changing back forever. She's not the same any more. Maybe Ruby can live like this, but I just can't anymore.
Ruby leaned around the corner of the warehouse wall, waving to get her friend's attention. Slapping the wall of Weiss's room lightly, seeing her partner's head jerk up as her train of thought was broken, the redhead called out to her partner. "Weiss, we gotta go." She then backed out of the blonde's room, leaving her to deal with anything she needed to before she left.
Nodding absentmindedly, Weiss stood up and began shuffling towards the door Ruby had disappeared through, twisting her neck and hearing it pop twice as she loosened her stiff muscles. Weiss had just been sitting on her cot, fully clothed in her pure white winter gear, staring off into space at one of the warehouse walls. She did that a lot lately.
The infamous duo had received the best sleeping quarters besides Bradley himself when they took his right and left hand men's positions, inside of the interior warehouse. Their rooms used to be two side by side offices, whose interior call center equipment had been ripped out and replaced with the furnishings of an apartment bedroom. It was actually warm here, and they both were able to sleep through the full night without taking watches for once.
While Weiss hated everything else that went on here, she had fallen in love with that small treat. The blonde couldn't remember the last time she had been able to sleep through the night uninterrupted.
While Weiss couldn't be sure, she suspected that Ruby wasn't advantage of the opportunity. The dark bags under the redhead's eyes told Weiss that her partner was still sleeping very little.
Ruby had casually leaned against the outside door frame, and hummed lightly as Weiss strode past her. "Bradley's given us a job for the day." Weiss only shrugged as she turned down the corridor leading to the central part of the building, already dreading the day's events. 'So who are we going to have to rough up today? Are we going to beat some people senseless for absolutely no reason again?'
As they weaved through the warehouse and into the back alley that connected to Bradley's stronghold, Ruby gave off a visible shiver as she stepped into the cold snow-paved alley. Ruby was always a bit more edgy this time of year; the red-head really hated the cold and the sharp, painful, needly tingle it left in her fingers. If they could find a doctor he would probably have said Ruby had bad circulation in her hands... but neither of the two had had the luck to run into one in the last seven years. Hopping up and down, trying to work out the cold, Ruby rubbed her hands together as she turned to Weiss. "Let's get out of this alley and into the sunlight."
Weiss followed behind Ruby, and as they left the back alley and walked down the streets leading to today's job they both listened to the dozens of cat calls they received from the random passersbyers. Weiss couldn't care less about the idiots, she knew they were just being stupid. To the blonde, there was actually something amusing about their obvious desperation; she thought their hasty attempts at flirting from across the street were almost pitiful. And she would have been lying if she said that she didn't enjoy the attention on some level. She still enjoyed having her ego inflated, even if she knew the bars for earning complements had dropped conciderably.
Ruby didn't have that sense of humor though. She'd shoot anyone who even attempted to make a move on them a heart stopping glare, one that pretty much silenced any person with even a single shred of sense. Those who didn't quickly learned from their mistake. Ruby still didn't trust men after what had happened to Yang; she probably never would, and had smashed a lot of noses over the years when a suitor got closer than Ruby found acceptable. The distance varied with her mood; sometimes being less than a foot, and sometimes Ruby would stalk all the way down a street to deal with a particularly annoying heckler.
When Ruby took a turn away from their usual path through the snow-covered streets, Weiss sighed loudly, grabbing the redhead's attention. "So, what are we doing today?"
Ruby answered her bluntly, although it sounded somewhat rehearsed. "Bradley wants us to send a message to someone on east end. Sent us to clear the place out."
"Do we have to?" Weiss complained, uneager to have to end any more lives.
"We aren't doing anything; it's a one person job. You're just here as a look out; I just need you to look pretty and make me feel a little safer."
"But why are we even doing this Ruby? We could just leave the city now… winter is over." That last part wasn't true yet; it was still cold enough out that the two could see their breath leaving the scarves in front of their faces. But unless the universe had decided to send everyone into an unexpected ice age, winter would have to be over within the next few weeks.
"Bradley is giving us a box of ammo each, some sign of good faith I guess, when we finish this job. It's last thing we need to make it through the spring… once we get those…" Ruby then shrugged her shoulders and finished nonchalantly: "We get those, and then we're leaving."
Weiss was stunned by Ruby's statement. She had never even gotten the slightest whiff of Ruby wanting to move on. It was day four of the seven days she had given Ruby to pack up and leave. A little more than suspicious at the coincidence, Weiss snapped "have you been going through my stuff recently?"
"Hmph, nope… should I still be?" Ruby couldn't watch Weiss as closely as before, now that they both had separate quarters and full schedules. It wasn't a secret to the town that Weiss was on the suicidal side, as if to balance out her partner's psychotic sadistic streak. Ruby tried to watch over her as best she could, but there wasn't much to stop Weiss from disappearing for few hours to make a noose or find a razor in a city this large.
It was something Ruby constantly worried about every day, and one of the main contributors to her lack of sleep. The redhead made a point to always be up before and go to bed after Weiss. If the blonde was ever going to do something, that would probably be the time she'd try.
"No you shouldn't! I'm just... a little surprised by your sudden change in tone. What made you change your mind?"
Walking across the cracked sidewalk, Ruby suddenly froze when she looked at how meticulously someone had scraped the snow into a knee-high wall bordering the walkway. Sneering at the snow while speaking to Weiss, Ruby muttered to the woman next to her so low Weiss had to strain to hear it.
"You're obviously not happy… and personally, I would rather not keep pushing my luck. Bradley thinks we're a pair of god damn miracle workers, and I know he's going to ask us for something we just can't pull off sooner or later. He's not going to take it well when I say no". Swinging her leg, Ruby let her boot tip rip through and ruin the perfect snow bank someone had obviously spent a lot of time making earlier in the morning. Apparently the idea of someone wasting time on something so frivolous was frustrating to the redhead. After a second, third, and fourth kick, the section of the wall they were standing by looked more like a lumpy hill than the perfectly groomed snow bank it had been sculpted into only a moment before.
Looking back at Weiss once she was satisfied with her work, Ruby saw the annoyed and suspicious look on Weiss's face. Holding her hand's palm up to Weiss, Ruby commented dryly: "Neither one of us is getting what we want out of this arrangement, so I don't see any point in trying to keep it up."
"Alright… are we just going to disappear?"
"I'm still working on that part… anyway, we're here." Ruby waved her hand to signal the discussion was over, and slid her hand into her coat pocket, wrapping her fingers around the wooden grip of the snub pistol she had been loaned a few months earlier. That was the only reason Ruby wasn't wearing gloves. Other than thick wool mittens, Ruby couldn't find anything that actually blocked out the cold well enough for her hands to stop that would leave her unable to hold a gun, or her own knife for that matter.
It took a lot of paying off for Bradley to be able to sneak a firearm this deep into the city, and he'd be pretty upset if Ruby ended up losing it. Firearms were prohibited inside of the inner districts of the city, and Bradley didn't have many this deep. It was supposed to be a sign of trust… Bradley didn't want to lose the pair's loyalty, as they're names were well known all across the western half of this continent. Saying he had the two ex-huntresses roaming the streets was like saying he had an oiled up, fully operational tank patrolling the city.
As Weiss took in where they were walking, she saw the old, rusty building that doubled as a bootleg alcohol distillery. And Weiss actually knew who they were walking towards.
Trying to grab the redhead's coat, her fingers slipping on the slick nylon material, Weiss tried to stop Ruby. "Ruby!" The heiress hissed to the redhead walking ahead of her in a feverish whisper, trying to convey her sense of reluctance and dread. "This is… this is suicide! This isn't a one person job; it's a ten or twenty person assault! This is Diego's territory now, we lost it last month!"
Without stopping or slowing down, Ruby spoke over her shoulder to Weiss in a level tone. "Yeah, I told Bradley that as well. But apparently he and Diego are meeting somewhere on neutral turf to talk things out right about now. Tensions are high, and I guess they don't want to get into another gang war. At least that's what Diego thinks… if this doesn't prove Bradley still doesn't want Diego's head on a pike, I don't know what would. So Bradley's betting on most of Diego's goons being away; he'll probably want to intimidate us with how many more people they have."
Weiss hissed: "So what if most of their people are away!? Diego is no fool! He probably left like ten guys behind!"
Pointing across the street, Ruby growled at Weiss, who was starting to get on Ruby's nerves. "Just watch for any damn reinforcements from that building over there! I'll give a signal when I've cleared them all out".
Putting her hands on her hips, Weiss mocked Ruby angrily. "Oh! I see! Perfect plan Ruby, perfect plan!" Stopping for one second for dramatic effect, Weiss then added: "Just one quick little question though? What the fuck am I supposed to do if there are reinforcements huh?!"
Throwing her hands up in the air as she walked away, Ruby grumbled "I don't know Weiss! Be creative! I'm sure you'll figure something out!"
Reluctantly, hurling a steady stream of curses at her partner under her breath as she pulled herself over the iron fence and up to the balcony, Weiss did what she was told. Crouching against a brick wall to protect herself from the most of the winds bite, she was now watching over the street from the balcony terrace across the stronghold. Watching as Ruby approached, Weiss was just as impressed as always by how nonchalantly Ruby walked towards what could very well be her death.
Ruby loped gracefully up to the building through the snow, which had one lone guard sitting on an overturned barrel in front of the rusty warehouse doors. The man didn't take any notice to Ruby's approach while he watched the tongues of flame dancing upwards from a trash can fire he was using to keep warm. Weiss guessed that Ruby would try to slip by the man and keep on moving forward into the factory. Instead she was instead when her partner waked up to him calmly and tapped on his shoulder. The guard made the mistake of looking up, and a flash of silver flew by as Ruby's knife slashed across the man's throat. Even from this distance Weiss could see the spray of red that trailed behind the arc of Ruby's knife. He grabbed at his throat, futily trying to stop the bleeding while he silently thrashed on the ground. Before he even came to understand what was going on he had gone still.
Ruby wasted no time, and heaved up the corpse under it armpits, careful not to let the man leak blood onto her jacket. She dragged his body around the side of the building, being extremely careful to not have his ruined throat dribble red all over the path. Weiss had known this Ruby for so long, she could almost hear the redhead's logic in her mind. 'If I had let him live, he might have ran for reinforcements. I had to kill him or he would have caused problems for Weiss and I. And if someone saw his body they might do the same.'
Ruby then walked back to the front of the building, and kicked fresh snow over the scarlet patch where a man had been only moments before. Weiss saw Ruby cast a glance back at the two deep tracks where the corpse's legs had dug into the snow. But nothing could be done about those though; at least they weren't immediately suspicious. Ruby, now carrying her pistol in hand, slowly moved into the building through the door that her victim had been stationed outside.
The minutes of waiting were excruciatingly long, and as Weiss listened for anything that could give a hint to if Ruby was safe or not, she began to wonder what she would do if Ruby did actually die. Weiss couldn't do anything to help her now if things went south; she had only brought her hunting knife with her for the 'trip'. Ruby's life was extremely important to her, but in the end it just couldn't more important than her own. I guess… I guess I would travel southwest maybe, back across the plains. Most of the trees would be bearing fruit about now, and I doubt many people would want to wander the wilderness in this weather. I'm better in the cold than most… I could make it. It would be somewhat safe at least. From there… I guess I would-
Weiss would have kept on going, but she snapped out of her thought process by the sound of gunfire. It was barely audible as it resonated from deep within the storage facility, but the noise was still unmistakable. Bullets were precious; they were pretty much your only connection to life while you were in a pinch, so someone wasn't just firing off a few rounds for fun. Someone was really trying to kill somebody else. After the six shots Weiss heard, all that was audible afterwards was total piercing silence, and Weiss strained to hear anything else through the wind that had begun to whistle across the street. It felt as though her heart was in her throat, and as she felt the blood pounding in her ears, the blonde had a hard time swallowing.
I wonder if I actually meant-
Weiss sighed in relief when she heard a faint, piercing melody from across the street. A whistle the two had made up years ago, it was only four simple notes. Just two short tweets followed by two long, deep trills. When Ruby had made it up she joked darkly: "For the living who don't need mourned, and the dead who should be remembered". So Ruby was fine.
Weiss jumped down from the terrace, bending her knee's as soon as she landed to absorb the majority of the impact, and quickly ran across the street. With her hunting knife drawn Weiss slipped through the doorway, eager to find Ruby and leave. Ruby had probably thrown caution to the wind and started looting, scrounging up ammo and food from the premises. She probably hadn't even stopped to consider that there might have been more men nearby, men who ran for reinforcements as soon as they heard gunshots instead of standing and fighting the redhead.
As Weiss ran down a long hallway, she almost tripped over two dead bodies lying just behind a corner in a turn in the hall. Both of the two had received deep puncture wounds to the neck. Stepping gingerly over the corpses, respectfully nodding to the two dead men, she continued down the hallway at a lighter pace. Entering a large, open room with a tanker taller than herself and her partner combined against one wall, she found Ruby leaning against the wall next to the hallway entrance. Ruby just grunted at Weiss when the blonde strode past her, craning her neck while cradling her left arm in front of her face. She gingerly pulling at her jacket's fabric, which now had a red splotch slowly growing over her upper left arm.
"Get hit?"
"Yep. Gave the two dumbasses over there a chance to surrender after they saw me kill that one over there. They were the only ones left." Ruby then jerked her head in the direction of a pair of corpses over in the corner. Only one set of legs were visible from behind the box they had taken cover behind, although there were two chest high blood splatters on the walls behind the boxes. "Tall one decided to fire on me instead".
Casting a glance around, counting six bodies, Weiss asked: "How many were there?"
"Nine. I'm guessing you already saw the two in the hall, there's one in that office over there, and finally the six out here in this open area" Ruby answered. Chuckling darkly to herself, Ruby gave Weiss a sheepish look. "Well, actually ten. I almost forgot about the guy outside".
"Hmm…," was Weiss's only response. She didn't like a chuckle being Ruby's response to an ended life. "Well, let's go… you're not going to bleed out any time soon, and we can patch you up when we get back."
"We aren't done yet." Muttering to herself, Ruby leaned down and ripped a scrap of cloth from one of her fallen foes. Wrapping it around her upper arm, she pulled one end with her right fist, using her teeth to hold the other end of the strip tightly in place. She gave out a small groan while she tightened the bandage, and then began to walk over to the large vat off against the warehouses wall. Ruby had been shot before; the pain was nothing new to her.
Taking two steps up a small ladder, Ruby unhooked a latch and lifted the lid off of the industrial sized vat, peering down into its murky contents. Ruby had never liked the tastes or the effects of booze, either before or after the end of the world. Who wanted to stumble around, loud and noisy, having the time of your life, and then not remember any of it the next day? And with the horrible headache to boot, Ruby couldn't remember a single positive quality about any of her drunken experiences with the rest of the group. Well, other than hearing some funny stories from the rest of the team. Even those had usually been at the redheads own expense, being that Ruby had possessed almost zero tolerance for liquor. Weiss on the other hand enjoyed the sense of release and euphoria alcohol had given her, and remembered her few experiences with the colorful cocktails she had enjoyed in her youth with her friends fondly. But she also understood how dangerous a foggy mind was in this world now, and abstained from it for that reason alone.
But to others though… a keg of beer was worth a box of ammo, maybe even the rifle along with the bullets as well. And by the looks of it, Diego had succeeded in making enough alcohol to fill an armory.
"Bradley told me to do this, although I find it a bit excessive. It'll definitely be sure to ruin Diego's day though." Ruby walked over to one of the bodies on the floor, the closest one to her, and began hefting it up over her shoulder. Once she got the corpse, who the red head had stabbed in the back before anyone had noticed her approach, over her good shoulder, Ruby walked back over to the vat and tried to lift the body over the lip of the container and into the basin. She ended up sliding the heavy body up the side of the tanker.
Weiss, who had gone slightly green at the thought of Ruby's actions, would have let her partner continue on if she hadn't seen the bodies face. It wasn't some hardened, bearded face of most of the men in this world. It was the face of a child, with a pencil thin mustache and a wispy under-beard. He couldn't have been older than seventeen.
Weiss called out solemnly as Ruby prepared to let him go into the vat."Not him"
Ruby pulled him back down, not even stopping to question why Weiss had singled out the body. To Ruby, that was all they were. Bodies. Whatever Weiss, I've got more bodies... She grabbed another one after she unceremoniously dropped the kid's corpse next to the vat, and swung the replacement in before Weiss could find something worth mourning about in this one as well. A sloshing sound could be heard from the basin as the body fell in, and a spray of foam leapt into the air, similar to the splash someone saw when a large rock was thrown into a lake.
As Ruby slammed shut the lid on the basin and redid the clasp, whistling to herself while she did so, Weiss asked in a shaky tone "how can you be so okay with this?" Looking around, distraught, Weiss continued on. "These people, they weren't bad people. At least, we can't know if they were. They were just… they were just… they just were on a different side than we were. Some of these people were children, or probably had children."
In the dead tone Ruby used to block out pain she responded "I'm more interested in what a person represents than who that person actually is."
Weiss couldn't take that dead voice from her friend anymore. All it did was mock the old Ruby, the one who had laughed and cried freely when the world threw challenges her way. The one who had once been the most important person in Weiss's life. She still was, although not in the same way. Angrily the blonde yelled: "STOP GIVING ME YOUR STUPID FUCKING RIDDLES! JUST GIVE ME AN HONEST-TO-GOD STRAIGHT FUCKING ANSWER FOR ONCE!"
After a moment of silence, which Ruby just spent staring at Weiss unashamedly, the heiress turned on her heel and began to stalk out of the factory. "Fuck you Ruby…"
She would have kept on going, but the blonde heard a sad mumble behind her. Weiss stopped, looking back at her partner. Through hard eyes Ruby stared at Weiss and began whispering sadly. "You're right. Some of these people were children. They probably weren't bad, and they most likely did have families relying on them to provide…" Shaking her head slowly, Ruby continued on with what she had to say, defending her own choices as much as she was explaining for Weiss.
"But where you see a kid, one who had a family who needed him, or had a girl who depended on him… all I can see is a guard. An armed guard. A guard who would have killed you without a second thought, if that was what it took to survive and protect his loved ones. I can't blame him for it… because I'm doing the same thing. I'm playing the same game. To me, we are… no, we were both fair fighters, equals in our competition for survival. He only lost to me in a fair fight…"
And with that, Ruby strode past Weiss and out of the factory, unable to bear the troubled and saddened look she was getting from her partner any longer.
"You girls are golden!" Eyeing his two most valuable weapons as he strode back and forth in front of them, Bradley couldn't help but grin wildly. He took a swig from a bottle of whisky that he had been enjoying, and then hollered loudly "I can't believe you even went through with… well, with the thing with the tanker. And I thought today couldn't go any better!"
Weiss found it gross how he could continue drinking liquor while listening to their… well really it was just Ruby's report. Weiss didn't really have much to contribute. He had already been drinking before they got back, and Weiss found it repulsive watching the man calling the shots stumbling around his throne drunkenly.
Bradley was in his mid-forties, already going grey and wrinkled from constant stress. He wasn't fat, but he definitely hadn't experienced the hunger most survivors had in the recent months. Bradley wasn't a leader; he was just charismatic enough to get people to follow him. That, paired with a few lucky calls, were really the only reasons he was in charge. Ruby and Weiss were both natural leaders in their own rights, and could have led these people better, even if they didn't want to. A stoned Weiss would have probably been better at calling the shots than a sober Bradley any day. And Ruby had already influenced Bradley several times, tempering his rage so that he wouldn't do something stupid enough to destroy everything, including Weiss.
"Of course, I have you to thank, little missy…" Bradley began leaning down as if to caress Ruby's face. Ruby caught his hand and twisted it so roughly that Bradley was forced to turn around, and shoved the drunk away.
"Bradley, while I am fond of you," Ruby lied, "try to touch either one of us again and I'll take your hand off."
Bradley just chuckled at Ruby's threat, obviously not taking her seriously as he should have. "You shouldn't worry; you aren't much of a match to my particular tastes anyway. Prefer them a little more… exotic. You're both a tad too plain."
"You're drunk" Ruby was getting frustrated and more than little panicked at how long this was taking. Ruby didn't want to stick around for long; she knew that Diego would be mounting an assault as soon as he got word of how he'd been backstabbed so quickly. "Anyways, deals a deal. Where's our reward?"
Bradley just jerked his head over to a drawer off by the wall, already beginning to walk off, humming to himself while cradling his stupid booze. He thought he had nothing to worry, that his people would be there to protect him when Diego came knocking. It would be a cruel slap from reality when he found out his two best fighters had disappeared in the night.
Opening the cabinet Ruby found her prizes, and tucked the two boxes under her good arm while turning back to Weiss. "Alright, let's go… uh, hang out I guess." While nobody was around, it probably wasn't the best idea to just announce to the world their preparation to bail on the gang. Weiss shrugged her shoulders and turned, walking back to her room.
"So… how long do you think it will be before they realize we're gone?" Weiss looked back over her shoulder at Caric, and as its skyline receded into the distance she didn't feel any sense of sadness while leaving the city behind. Weiss would be totally fine with putting these last three months behind her, and forgetting the experience all together.
Ruby's only answer was: "...Won't matter, we'll be long gone by then." Ruby was actually just thankful that they were able to get out of the city without a hitch. "What I wouldn't give to be there when Bradley hears how we've screwed him over though." With a laugh Ruby commented dryly: "That will probably wipe that stupid drunken smile off of his face real quick."
After the two had slipped off to Weiss's quarters, Ruby had stood with her back to Weiss's door while she watched her partner pack up her stuff for the road. Weiss was smart and decided to not take every single possession, so that if someone did walk by her room tonight they wouldn't find it barren. They then repeated the process for Ruby's room, which took substantially less time. The red head had packed up about an hour after she read Weiss's newest journal entry two days earlier, and had spent the past 48 hours thinking of ways to nonchalantly bring up leaving. She would never have taken Bradley's suicide mission otherwise. Ruby wasn't a fool, and knew how bad an idea the mission was the moment it left Bradley's lips. But as far as timing was considered it was perfect; it gave her the excuse she needed to say she wanted to leave. And as far as Ruby knew Weiss wasn't any more suspicious than she should have been.
It took the pair about an hour to go from being inside Bradley's stronghold to leaving the city limits. They could have done it in a quarter of the time, but Ruby thought walking out the main southern exit to the city probably wouldn't be the best idea, and if they really were sneaking out they might as well be thorough. The pair had both discussed beforehand whether it would be better to hide in the city until morning the next day before they left, or to brave the surrounding wilderness for the night. In the end they decided to take the risk and brave the wilds for just one night. While being out in the wilderness weaponless was dangerous, if they were still in around when Diego decided to attack they would surely not survive. Ruby knew she was only able to take out those ten men singlehandedly today because the first seven she caught unaware, and killed the last three in the scramble of confusion that followed immediately after she had been discovered. Against a larger force, in a fair fight, Ruby knew she didn't have much hope of getting Weiss out alive. Ruby was a better fighter than anyone in this new world order, but she still had to answer to human limitations.
And as an added bonus, if someone did notice their absence, Bradley wouldn't be able to send anyone after the duo until morning. No one who wasn't as desperate as the pair was would leave the city and stumble around in the forest at night, just to go get the women who would already have a vast lead on the searchers and be better equipped to deal with their pursuers as well. Knowing Bradley's personality he would probably just call it quits and curse his losses. Sometimes it really was nice being overestimated.
Stopping by a fallen tree, Ruby grunted while she rolled the trunk a few rotations, and then grabbed her old rifle out from a small hole in the ground. "I missed you baby," Ruby joked, mocking how much she used to love her old weapon. She quickly leaned down and handed Weiss her trusted revolver. Flashing the heiress a strained smile, Ruby shoved her hands in her pockets and turned down the nearby trail. "Let's get going..."
After walking for about thirty minutes the sun began to set, and Ruby lit up the flashlight she kept on an o-ring that attached to her pack's shoulder strap. Ruby left it dangling there, pointing at the ground and the white snow they were walking over. It didn't offer much light, but it did keep the surrounding ten foot radius visible in the approaching winter dusk.
Ruby turned to Weiss, who was nervously watching the surrounding trees, and waved a hand to get the blonde's attention. "You have any particular direction you want to go in?"
"No… you know I never do," Weiss answered, actually feeling slightly safer because of her partners relaxed attitude. There couldn't be anything more dangerous in these woods than the person standing next to her. Weiss had to believe that.
"Thought so" Ruby quipped lightly. Sticking out her hand and pulling in her thumb, Ruby wiggled her four fingers in front of Weiss's face, casting forked shadows across the blondes scowl. "Pick a number."
"Four." Weiss could only sigh at this. So they were just going to leave this up to chance as well?
Ruby looked at her hand for a moment, and then grinned sheepishly at her partner. "Pick again."
"What? No, Ruby… just pick one."
"Nope, I'm the driver and you're the navigator, remember?"
"And why can't we just use the one I picked?"
Ruby chuckled and said: "Forgot we can't go north from here, we're already on the northern most coastline… unless someone found out they could swim across an ocean and hasn't told me yet?"
"Uhhhhhhhh…" Weiss faked groaning, even though she was having fun with the jokes. She thought about it for a moment, wondering if there was any logic at all to Ruby's choices. "Okay then… two?
"Good choice! We haven't gone any farther east than here in over five years!" And with that, Ruby turned on a ninety degree angle to her left and led Weiss forward towards whatever they were going to find next in this hellish adventure of theirs.
So, more of an action chapter than I had originally planned. I actually toned this down a lot from what I had originally wrote. The first time I wrote it everything in the middle part was from Ruby's perspective instead of Weiss's. Made it a little too graphic, definitely pushed the story over into M.
Give a rating and a review; let me know if I have something I need to improve on, or if you really enjoyed it.
Thanks again, and I'll see you around!