The desert sands washed away any semblance of colour the buildings once had as the wind swirled it into a haze. The few plants sturdy enough to survive the heat and drought poked out of cracks in the stone walls of the small community. The only notable landmark was a metal tower covered in satellite dishes and secluded behind a chain link fence. The horizon was a blur as sand melted into sun.
Over a dune, two figures approached. Heavily armed and armoured and covered in dust, they laughed towards the village.
"There's no way, the eyes are the windows to the soul, right? Well she's got my eyes so she's got my soul too. Therefore, she's got my semblance." The woman said, lightly hitting her partner on the shoulder. She wore studded leather armour over a light seafoam green blouse and baggy brown trousers ending in strapped sandals. She had a fresh cut across her jaw and two tiger ears poking out of wavy light brown hair.
Her partner scoffed. "She's your spitting image - except smaller and less violent - of course her eyes are yours." He had lighter armour, with patches of leather on his wrists and shoulders. His skin was dark, and his clothing light, his arms and midriff exposed to deal with the heat. He had no noticeable faunus features"What if she's got her own? No reason it should be yours or mine."
The tiger faunus rolled her eyes as they entered the community. "Hon, she's got two hereditary semblances fighting for her, as much as I want her to be unique there's no way she's walking away with a random semblance. My semblance goes back four generations, She's going to be lighting seals as soon as we unlock her aura."
Her husband raised an eyebrow. "Four generations you say? My semblance is literally one of the oldest ever recorded. If she's got either of ours then it's going to be mine." They stopped outside a crumbling wooden door with sand piling up against it. The two pushed inside, met with a room much more colourful than its bland exterior. There was a hard wooden floor which met the pastel blue walls, adorned with dozens of pictures and shutters open over the cracked windows.
The two threw themselves on a patchy and well-worn sofa.
"So what if your semblance goes back to the dawn of time or whatever, do you really want her to see some flashy colours like you or have actual magic like me?"
The male scoffed. "Magic? You really think highly of yourself, Vi."
"No, if anything I don't think enough of myself." She smirked "I'm amazing and you know it, Mar."
"Late night?" Yang asked Ruby, who was almost falling asleep in her cereal. Yang was more than familiar with Ruby's proclivity for mornings. Ruby raised her head, bloodshot eyes glaring through dishevelled hair. Her usually immaculate (with the addition of a red cloak) Beacon uniform was equally dishevelled. She had missed a few buttons on her shirt which was open at the top - showing more skin than she would normally allow - and her bow was tied in more of a lump than anything resembling a knot. Her tights were nowhere to be seen and her boots were untied.
"I wognhh…" Ruby tried to speak and it devolved into noise that only Yang could decipher.
"You woke up even earlier and couldn't get back to sleep? You should have woke me up, I would have made you some warm whole milk like I used to."
Ruby yawned while Weiss and Blake shared a look - one about both their leader's state and at the fact Yang understood her.
"Drake kept me company for a bit, he couldn't sleep either." Ruby mumbled as she swirled her cereal around with her spoon. "I was awake because I was thinking about what we talked about, milk wouldn't have helped."
Yang raised an eyebrow. "What did you talk about?"
"Well firstly he told me he got shot with a crossbow when they met. Then I tried to get some answers out of him about everything and he just kind of kept deflecting."
Blake's eyes widened. "A crossbow? I'd hate to be whoever did that, considering aura can block bullets that would have done nothing but made him angry."
"Nope! He didn't have aura, he got shot in his side and passed out apparently, he said he was pretty young at the time." WBY shared glances.
"What else did you talk about?" Yang leant forwards.
"Lucy's handcuffs were stolen from Atlas apparently, she uses them because her semblance gives her headaches or something…"
A hand clamped down on Blake's shoulder.
"Headaches? He really knows how to downplay it, huh?" The woman in question laughed as Blake spun and froze. "It's more like having a hot iron pushed into my eyes. And they were stolen from Solitas, just east of Atlas actually." She sat down on Blake's left with a cup of orange juice in hand.
"Why would your semblance give you headaches?" Weiss asked the tiger faunus.
"Well, without going into detail - don't want to give you guys any unfair advantages in a fight if you catch my drift - I see a lot of bright colours going every which way.
It's just a lot of information and then there are these feelings I can't quite explain - it's a bit of an overload on the senses.
Something that Lucy and Drake had learned about Team RWBY was that such a mismatched group of people of course had strange tendencies. They worked together well, got along well enough, but had little respect for normalcy. For example, they were currently being very loud in the library. Their game got louder as the siblings got more invested and drew in the heiress too. Over on the adjacent table, Lucy was leaning into Jaune, reading the newest Xray and Vav with him while Pyrrha glared daggers at her. She couldn't decide if it was because she was leaning into Jaune or because she was encouraging him to not study.
Meanwhile, Drake was sitting opposite Ren and Pyrrha and actually studying with the patience of a saint. After years of dealing with an easily distracted Lucy and dealing with hundreds of unnecessary questions about his dress sense he had been left with a unique ability to enter a state of complete unawareness. He calmly reached for an eraser with his right hand and began undoing some incorrect work when his hand was wrenched away by Nora who had woken up from napping on a textbook.
"Come on I'm bored -" Nora opened her eyes in shock as Drake's hand cracked loudly under his glove. She recoiled as if she'd touched a nettle. "OH MY GOD I'MSOSORRYITOUCHEDSOMELIVEWIRESWHILEFIXINGMAGNHILDANDMYSEMBLANCEGOTALLHYPEDUPIDON'TKNOWMYOWNSTRENGTHDIDIHURTYOU-" Drake shushed her, waving his gloved hand to show nothing was wrong.
"Shh!" He hissed, "This is a library, be quiet." He rather rudely said before reaching again for his eraser. "I'm fine, I'd be better if you started studying too."
Ren's eyebrows drew down at Drake's tone. "She was just trying to apologise for hurting you."
Drake didn't look up from his work. "She shouldn't have to apologise if she didn't touch me without permission."
"She wasn't trying to-"
Lucy cut off Ren's thought. "Oh don't mind him, Drake doesn't do… people." She chuckled at the innuendo. "You should try going to a restaurant with him, he almost made a waitress cry once because she asked how his meal was just after he took a bite. Best part about it was he thought he was being polite and was pretty shocked about it. Trust me, he's just trying to get the message across and not even thinking about tone." She stood up and walked behind her partner, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Hey Dee?" She said sweetly. "You're a heartless bastard and you should apologise for being such a bitch, okay?" As she said that she slid down his body until their cheeks were touching through his scarf and her arms were wrapped around his chest.
Drake looked at her from the corner of his eye and sighed. He closed his book and placed his gloved hand on it while reaching up to grab Lucy's forearm with his left, he raised his head and looked Nora in the eye a little too much.
"I apologise for being such a bitch." He said in a flat voice. Lucy whispered in his ear.
"I understand that I don't come across well, you were simply trying to gain my attention and I reacted harshly. I will now say things that I appreciate about you." Lucy swatted his ear with a disappointed expression. "I genuinely do think you're a nice person, you're fun to be around and I would like to get to know you better - if you respect my personal space. I have given up with Lucy, I don't think I would be able to do that with anyone else." He said honestly. Lucy laughed.
"You should have seen him squirming when I picked him up for the first time, the dude broke his leg and still tried to convince me to let him walk."
"I wasn't 'squirming' because you picked me up, I was squirming because you wouldn't stop touching my arse." The fact that he said that line so matter-of-factly roused a laugh out of everyone at the table and drew a snort from Neptune who had appeared at the next table over with his leader.
Lucy reached down and grabbed Drake's gloved hand, raising it with a squeeze which caused another crack. "Also don't worry, Drake's not too fragile. This hand just does that." She looked over at Sun and Neptune, still holding her boyfriend's hand. "Hiya Sun!" She waved his hand toward them in a greeting, evoking a variety of snaps, crackles and pops which drew grimaces from the entire party. She dropped the hand and waltzed over to her host team and their guests just as Blake sped away. "You know, I'm starting to think she doesn't like me." She grinned viciously.
Yang's face pulled into a curious expression. "Yeah… seems like it." Weiss lightly swatted Yang's arm. "I'll just be right back." Yang announced, standing up from their game despite Ruby's protest for the game to be finished.
After a jog, Yang caught up to Blake and all but tackled her into a nearby closet, blocking the door with her body.
"Yang! What the f-" Blake was cut off by a hand covering her mouth.
"Pay up, tell me what the hell is up with those two." Yang smirked. "Oh and if you keep licking my hand like that I might not take it off- OW YOU BITCH!" She recoiled, her hand now sporting a fresh bite mark.
"Yang I didn't run off because of them…"
Yang rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah I know, you wanted to avoid Sun and you've been doing your homework on our friendly neighbourhood racial supremacists, we all know. But you weren't sleeping even before then, almost as soon as those two showed up you've been resembling a beat up raccoon. Talk." She crossed her arms, pulling out her old reliable 'I'm not mad at you Ruby for trying to install a grenade launcher onto bumblebee, I'm just disappointed' look. Three seconds of that look and Ruby would crack - Blake couldn't be so different… right?
"It's… complicated…" Heh, nailed it "They haven't really done anything to me personally - well not much anyway - but they caused a lot of trouble for me… before."
"Are they from the Fang!?" Yang asked, gripping Blake's collar.
"No! No they're not! They are known factors though." She said, batting the hands away from her collar.
"Okay so what does that mean."
Blake ran a hand through her hair, catching her bow with a quiet 'Damnit' as it came undone revealing two ears pressed firmly into her hair in what Yang affectionately called 'Airplane ears' "Remember what Sun said about the night we fought Torchwick?"
"The time he wouldn't stop bragging about throwing a banana at him or the time he and Neptune ditched us for noodles?"
"The second time."
"What about it?" Yang asked.
"Well… remember those people that interrupted the gathering?"
Yang shook her head in disbelief "No… There's no way that both of the faunus I'm friends with are terror-obsessed maniacs…"
Blake glared at her. "Well, one of them was a tiger from the knees down and the other had green highlights in his hair."
"Motherfucker.
"That wasn't the first time either, I never ran into them but there were reports of 'The Tigress and The Dragon' for years before I left, almost as soon as the Fang turned violent our-their, I meant their - Mistralean branch was subject to violent attacks with numerous casualties."
"Wow, disregarding the fact that people sharing a room with my baby sister are apparently violent psychopaths, you kinda sounded a bit… uh… White Fang-y"
Blake's eyes turned into wide saucers and her ears stood up before she coughed and looked away. "Adam used to get corres - messages from Sienna Khan, I was just saying what she used to say. Anyway, apparently Lucy knows who I am and cornered me - I'm fairly sure that if it wasn't for Drake then I would be…."
Yang gasped "She was going to… going to…" She shook the thoughts from her head. "What kind of violence?"
"No survivors." The two words were like a hammer to Yang's chest. "Don't be scared though, remember Drake saved me and they only attack the Fang. They even let Roman go, didn't even bother hitting him until he hit them first."
"So they're murderers who only go after terrorists?" That honestly didn't sound too bad, like bloodthirsty vigilantes. That being said she still didn't feel comfortable about them being around her sister. "And how was an army of racists unable to get them? Don't get me wrong, they seem to know what they're doing and Lucy fucking destroyed team CRDL, but that doesn't seem possible."
"You know how people say war is like chess?"
"Yeah? I mean it doesn't make sense at all since people don't take turns."
"Well, the analogy makes a bit more sense when it comes to those two - the rumour was that they were always ten moves ahead and that they knew what you were going to do before you did."
"Well if they're going to stay with us for Gods know how long, then I'm going to need to judge for myself how dangerous they are."
"And… how are you going to do that?"
"Well obviously I'm gonna grab Pyrrha and beat them up!"
Sorry for how long this took and how bad the writing is, had a lot of personal stuff to deal with over the past couple weeks. All sorted now though.