On Taiyang's role of Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Chapter, I hemmed and hawed a bit about sticking him in alongside Qrow, but since his reaction to "hey my kids/nieces came back from a near-apocalyptic future" would essentially be the same as Qrow's, I figured I'd leave his part of the family chat for the chapter wherein Ruby and Yang talk about what happened to Summer since, you know, that'd affect him more anyway. No point in having two father figures (yes Qrow is a father figure to RWBYJNOR et. al shut the hell up) basically mirroring each other in the same scene.
Also, the first line Pyrrha quotes is from Cassandra by Christa Wolf, and yes, Cassandra as in the one from Troy. The second is from Hilary Mantel's Reith Lectures, Resurrection: The Art and Craft.
Anyway, prepare your hankies and get ready to welcome the onion-cutting ninjas; this is gonna be a sappy one. On a totally unrelated note, this was a tricky chapter to write, because I had to bludgeon intense believable emotions out of a whole bunch of characters and I'm not really a person who feels things intensely, so I was working mostly off of guesswork and psychology assumptions.
Mostly unrelated to that, I'm gonna take a little break. This fic takes a lot of juice, and me constantly squeezing my brain to keep the momentum rolling is beginning to make it harder to write. I wanna go at this with enthusiasm and energy, particularly considering the content in the next few chapters, so there probably won't be an update next Saturday while I recharge my batteries.
Team RWBY were in their dorm room going over their own pre-fight rituals when the knock happened. While Yang had no doubt that Jaune had drawn up a list of all their competitor's fighting styles, Semblances, and everything else that he could remember from the first (actual) time the tournament had happened –and was probably lecturing his teammates right now on who to lose to and how to lose to them– Team RWBY's style was much more relaxed.
Ruby was obsessively going over Crescent Rose, trying to put her mind at ease. Weiss was counting out and sorting her quite frankly worrying supply of personal Dust, making sure everything was at hand and she'd know precisely where to find it if the worst occurred. Blake, naturally, was reading, but she was also the closest to the door, so when the knock happened, it was her who got to her feet after glancing up.
Yang followed her partner with her eyes as Blake crossed the floor to open the door, and watched Blake's ears perk up slightly as she opened it and saw who was on the other side.
"Oh, hello…" Her catlike ears swiveled slightly in the way that they did when Blake wasn't quite certain of something. Her voice was amused, though, inviting their visitor to share the joke. "I guess it might feel a little weird for you if I just call you Qrow."
Ruby looked up from Crescent Rose. "Uncle Qrow's here?!"
"Uh, yeah." Blake stepped aside to reveal their uncle, who was leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. He waved languidly at them. "Do you want to come in…?"
"Don't mind if I do." he said, nodding to Blake cordially enough as he walked past her. His eyes roamed the room, picking out Weiss and all her containers of Dust, Ruby with Crescent Rose in her lap, and Yang sitting at the windowsill, flexing the fingers of her right hand.
There was a moment of silence as he measured them and they unconsciously returned the favor. Yang knew that her team looked too ready –too calm– for first years, and she watched him catch that, the slight furrow to his brows and the familiar unhappy twist to his mouth. The I know what I'm seeing but I'd really rather not be seeing it expression that he got sometimes when they were training.
He knew, of course –Ozpin had told them that he'd told Qrow– but this was the first time that their uncle had visited since learning about the future, and the weight of that knowledge hung heavy in the air between them.
"No reason that I can't do this elsewhere." Weiss suddenly said, breaking the extending silence before it could become too awkward, and snapped her suitcase shut. She began to gather up her other bags and vials. "Blake, if I could have your help taking this to the common room…?"
"Oh, sure." Blake said. She glanced towards the window before she moved, though, meeting Yang's eyes over Qrow's shoulder.
Do you want us to stay? Blake's gaze read, and Yang gave a halfhearted smile and shrugged with one shoulder. It was fine.
Blake nodded, and with one last lingering look, went to help Weiss gather up the Dust and move out of the room. They were quick about it, and barely had another thirty seconds passed before the door was swinging shut behind them and it was only the Xiaolong-Rose-Branwens in the room.
"So." Qrow said after a moment, standing there in the center of the room with his hands in his pockets.
"So." Yang nodded.
"So, so, so…"
"Ugh, you guys are impossible." Ruby grumbled, sliding the breech lock on Crescent Rose home with a firm click. "Sit down, Uncle Qrow, you're making my neck hurt."
He sat in the chair Blake had just vacated.
Yang couldn't help but twitch a little as her uncle's eyes roamed back over her, then Ruby, then her again. She knew he was looking, really looking, measuring her up against who she used to be in a way that nobody else but Dad could do. None of her classmates knew, so they didn't even look. Ozpin knew, but he didn't have a frame of reference for before. SSSNI and NPR knew, but for them, before had been a story.
But Qrow knew-knew. He'd known Yang since she wore pigtails, had been the one to drag her out of countless messes –and been the one to drag her into several others. He was the one person she could sorta-rely on to help her take care of Dad and Ruby, when he'd actually been around. He knew her, not just the act she'd been putting on for these past couple months.
It was a weird feeling –for all of them, probably.
"So…" Qrow's finger tapped against his folded arms, and he gave the two of them a wan ghost of a smile. " 'Spose I really shouldn't say how much you've grown since the last time I saw ya."
Yang snorted humorlessly.
"You look good, Uncle Qrow." Ruby said, lying loyally. He might not have months of ground-in weariness lining his face like he used to, like they'd seen back in Atlas, but the silver flask was back on his hip, and both of them hated it. Hated what it meant.
Qrow chuckled, smoothing his hair back in a theatrical preening gesture.
"Well, it takes some work to look this cool, so thanks for noticing, kiddo."
Coolest team to graduate Beacon, Yang thought with a sudden twist deep in her chest, remembering the last time she'd talked to her uncle here, and what is it, Mom? are you merciful, or are you a survivor? and oh, Ruby's expression in the Schnee manor as she slumped down against the staircase banister, clutching at the balustrade as she whispered did she tell you what it was –underneath? you know what that means, then. that's what happened to Mom.
The thought of Team STRQ being the Team RWBY of its generation was… not encouraging.
Yang noticed the heavy silence when she came back to herself, the way she had curled her right arm tight against her side, as if protecting it. Qrow's eyes were on her, heavy with understanding sympathy. Yang drew in a deep breath, then let it out, consciously loosening her posture.
She knew that they all wanted to talk about this –but what were they supposed to talk about? Qrow knew, and they knew that he knew, and he knew that they knew that he knew. There was nothing new to say, no arguments to be had. Obviously, some processing was in order, some discussion, but how did you look your suddenly too-old nieces in the face and ask hey, how've you been? How's the end times been treatin' ya?
How did you look at your uncle who tried and failed and tried, who'd done everything for you, when all you could see was the man who was still failing? Whose mistakes you had been forced to clean up for years down the line?
"Okay…" Qrow sighed after a few moments of that lengthening, uncomfortable silence, running a hand through his hair. He suddenly stood up and opened his arms, looking at both of them. "Bring it all in."
"Huh?" Yang blinked, and he lifted his hands slightly, quirking an expectant eyebrow.
"C'mon. Bring it in."
Yang and her sister exchanged a glance, but her resolve against it was not strong to begin with and she was quick to cross the room with Ruby. Qrow's arms enfolded them, and Yang buried her face in his shoulder and tried not to cry, tried to let herself have this, as she wrapped her arms tight around his back in response and Ruby looped hers around him a moment later in a tangled mess of limbs.
When was the last time someone had held her like this? When was the last time someone had hugged Yang with a tight and steady grip that promised all the dangers of the world would go away?
When was the last time someone had told her that the burden wasn't solely on her shoulders and made her believe it?
"Gods," Qrow whispered above her hair, and his voice was more than just naturally hoarse as his arms tightened around both of them. Perhaps it was easier to speak when none of them could see each other's faces. "Gods, I'm so, so sorry."
I know, Yang thought, and me too, and her eyes burned with tears. That was what broke the dam as those tears brimmed over and began to soak his shirt –he was sorry, he was sorry, for all that they'd seen and endured. Yang had heard you were too young, you never should have had to carry this burden from other people until all the meaning had run out of it –because whether they were telling the truth or not, she still had needed too, and whether she should've or not hadn't mattered worth a damn.
But Qrow was holding her and Ruby tight in the way that he'd done when they were kids and saying that it shouldn't have been you, we should've been the ones to clean up our own mess, we never should've fucked up badly enough that you had to get involved, gods, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, and that, fuck, that broke her.
Because now she knew exactly what it felt like to be in those shoes. She knew what it felt like to stand with the past and future on either side and try to do her best by both and know it still wasn't enough, to make her mistakes with a bitter heart and ash on her tongue because she already knew, even as she was fucking it up, that she was only making things worse for the people coming after her. She knew what it was like to know that and yet not stop because she had nothing else to do, no better choices to make, no other options unless she wanted to invite complete and utter annihilation.
And she was so, so tired of it all.
So they held each other tight and Yang cried, and Ruby cried, and maybe Qrow cried too, a little, but if he did he was silent about it –no hitched breaths like Ruby, no sobs like her. He just held them, reminding Yang of her childhood when she'd seen Uncle Qrow as someone as strong and immovable as a mountain, and never mind the flask gleaming on his hip or the shadows in his eyes. He held them like he never wanted to let them go, like if he just hugged them tight enough he'd be able to squeeze that terrible future right out of them.
Yang wasn't quite sure who started to fold their legs or when, but they all ended up on the floor, her and Ruby half in Qrow's lap like they were kids again as they all clutched at each other and breathed through the last hoarse traces of their tears.
"You guys did good." Uncle Qrow said, and Yang choked out a noise that might've been an ugly laugh in another lifetime. "No, I'm serious. You've done some real good, here. They're sweeping the CCT and Jimmy's 'bots twice a day for any viruses and so far, nobody's found anything. The Breach got closed up good. Ozpin's being more careful than ever with the tournament."
"S'not enough." Ruby mumbled, and Qrow squeezed them tighter.
"Hey." he said, and there was a terrifying gentleness in his voice, a low and soothing edge to his normal rasp that Yang had heard only a couple times when she was a kid, when she'd called Uncle Qrow in a panic because Dad still wasn't moving from the couch but they didn't have any groceries left. "I know you guys have been through a lot, but I promise, you made things different, kiddo."
Yang took a deep breath and closed her eyes, pressing her face against his shoulder.
"You made things better." Uncle Qrow said, his arm tightening over her back, and for a moment, Yang honestly believed him.
As Jaune's scraped-from-memory statistics board had predicted, it had been too much to ask for Team JNPR to immediately lose out in the team fights. They had done their best, but playacting at being overconfident had only gotten them so far, particularly when Jaune had reflexively deflected one of Roy Stallion's buzzsaws by shifting his shield to backhand it into the trees, which struck May Zedong out of the fight by whacking her across the forehead and knocking her off her perch.
Thankfully, they could claim sheer luck on Jaune's part for that maneuver, but with one member of their team eliminated, it had been almost embarrassingly easy to mop up the remaining three, particularly when Nora's Semblance was a perfect match against Nolan's weapon.
Despite having escaped the hounding crowds of fans and paparazzi during the post-fight scramble out of the stadium, Pyrrha sighed.
"You okay?" Jaune asked from his place seated across from her, looking worried, and Pyrrha conjured up a token smile for him.
"Oh yes, I'm fine."
He raised an eyebrow without saying anything, making Pyrrha huff out a laugh. Right. That kind of sparkling celebrity smile and deflection wouldn't work on any of her teammates, particularly not Jaune.
"I was just thinking…" she continued, more honestly this time. She stirred the little coffee stick inside her spiced cider, looking down at the table between them. "About, well…"
Neither of them had mentioned it. Neither of them had said anything about –about before.
Pyrrha's feelings on that were somewhat tangled, personally speaking.
On the one hand, knowing you were or would be in a relationship with someone was a rather awkward feeling, especially when they knew but hadn't told you.
But on the other hand… on the other hand, the devastation on Jaune's face in those visions, the tears, the loss, the panic that he showed. The way he had looked at her in the locker room at Beacon, briefly tongue-tied and stuttering, like his world had just caved in on him.
She lifted her drink and took a sip.
Pyrrha was the first to admit, handling that kind of momentous event was… well, there was no way around it. She had no idea how to handle such a thing happening to her, and to be brutally honest, she wasn't sure if she could've done better if she had been the one in Jaune's shoes.
How could you look at someone you loved, someone who had loved you enough to give their life for the mere chance that you'd live, and know that they didn't know you? That your relationship had never even existed, now? That you were strangers, and any attempt to make it otherwise carried the burden of the future?
It was a thorny problem that was far too knotted for two people their age to try and detangle, and never mind Jaune's future adventures saving the world from Salem. That was all very rudimentary: see an enemy, attack an enemy, thwart plans and be thwarted in turn, regroup, repeat. This was the kind of emotional and philosophical problem debated by university professors and romance novel writers.
They were both still teenagers, for goodness's sake! Even counting Jaune at his absolute oldest, he was only 19!
Pyrrha's shoulders lifted and sank in an unhappy sigh.
Of course, talking about their relationship, dealing with their relationship, that would require her knowing what she actually wanted out of it. Did she still love Jaune…?
Pyrrha wasn't sure, and that in itself was a dubious sign. She didn't not love him, but- but-
Well.
The future was the future, and that Pyrrha was dead and gone, and this Pyrrha –the one that sat across from Jaune Arc on a pair of benches flanking a stone table in Beacon's gardens– was not sure how she felt about any of it. Jaune cared, obviously, and so did she, but…
But she didn't know where to go from there. That, Pyrrha mused, was probably the crux of her long, lingering silence as Jaune cast her interested, slightly-worried looks and sipped at his own drink, patiently waiting for her to detangle her thoughts and speak.
Yes, they had been in love in the future-that-wasn't.
Yes, Pyrrha had been growing certain warm and fuzzy feelings deep inside her chest at the thought of Jaune for months now.
Yes, Jaune had entered their partnership without telling her about their past-future.
Yes, Pyrrha would probably not have been able to manage better, had she been in his place.
Yes, part of Pyrrha still felt manipulated, railroaded into thoughts and feelings that might not have developed naturally if Jaune hadn't put in the effort to become her partner.
Yes, Jaune had loved her and mourned her death so intensely that it became a facet of who he was as a person.
Yes, all of these things were true simultaneously, but there was no magical answer to clarify her feelings, no Yes, and that would wipe away her doubts.
"How do you feel about me?" Pyrrha asked, and Jaune choked on his drink, lifting startled blue eyes to her face when he could breathe again.
"W-what?!"
"About me." Pyrrha said, and one gloved finger drew slow, thoughtful spirals on the surface of their table. Her eyes followed the trail of her finger, thinking about the future, thinking about Beacon tower, thinking about now, and before, when she had gone out on an almost-date with Jaune and been followed by Nora and Ren. "How do you feel about us?"
"Pyrrha, I…" Jaune began, and then it was his turn to dry up, her turn to wait patiently as he groped his way towards the words he needed to express the thoughts and feelings swirling in the cauldron of his brain.
That was the other thing, the other weight hanging over their relationship-that-wasn't.
He had mourned her.
She had died.
Pyrrha licked her lips, tasting the fruity hint of her cider that lingered like a memory of autumn nights.
Her family had always been enamored of the classics, and as the Invincible Girl of Mistral, naturally she had been expected to read many of her kingdom's sagas, legends, and myths. There was one fallen city that stood out amidst bloody flames in Mistral's memory, an epic that was recounted and repackaged into a thousand other tales and songs and woes, and there was a line from one of those countless fragmented stories that had struck Pyrrha, even before she came to Beacon.
I cannot love a hero. I do not want to see you being transformed into a statue.
Of course, pre-Beacon, she had seen some cold and bitter irony in the idea of a hero becoming a statue, even if she had not actually expressed it to anyone. That would be rude.
But now, having seen the terrible path of that obsidian arrow –having heard the grief and rage choking Jaune's voice in the Haven atrium as he hurled his words at Cinder– the memory of those words made Pyrrha restless inside her own skin.
Did Jaune love her, all those lingering insecurities whispered, or just the idea of her? Did he love the memory more than the self?
As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for ourselves, we are interpreted. One of her tournament trainers had said that to her, scoffing about the attitudes about Hunters' casualty rates.
Was Jaune clinging to someone who didn't exist anymore? Someone who had been erased by Pyrrha's new knowledge of the future and the changing roles of everyone around them?
But she didn't know how to articulate any of that in a way that didn't sound accusative –much less say it in a way that would get her the answer she wanted. If she even knew what answer she wanted…
"We never had a chance." Jaune said, making her give a startled blink. His eyes were tortured as they lifted to her. "What we were- what we had- we never had a chance."
His voice trembled at that last word, almost breaking on it.
"I- I was never strong enough. I was never good enough. I never noticed how you felt, and then I had to sit back and watch as you went off to die and know you were fighting alone because I couldn't be there to help you. Because I would hold you back." Jaune said, the words spilling out of him in a torrent now, a flood of anguished babbling, as Pyrrha's fists tightened and her heart clenched and she suddenly wondered, in panic, if she did want to hear this. "And then I just- I just had to live with that."
His eyes were glossy with tears, blinking stubbornly to hold them back, his voice thick and choked, and terrible anguish struck Pyrrha's heart as she heard, saw, how comfortable he was in his grief, how he wore it like the cloak of an old friend. He had lived so long in his sadness that he wasn't even aware of it.
"I had to keep living because you gave your life for me and I, and I… I wasn't good enough to stop you. No matter what I did, no matter how good I got, I was always too weak to have saved you. And I- and I-"
He stopped. Swallowed.
"I was never enough." Jaune said, and the words seemed to scrape over broken glass as they left his throat –raw, bleeding, and fragmented; pain in every syllable. "No matter what I did, I wasn't enough."
He took another deep breath, gulping in air like a drowning swimmer as they breached the surface, visibly throttling down his feelings. His clenched hands relaxed on the table. When he looked to her again, his gaze was steady, even if his eyes were still wet.
"I feel like- the way I feel about us- I wanted to give you a chance." Jaune said. "A chance to do… whatever you wanted to do. Anything. Everything. I want you to be able to be alive to make that choice."
His throat bobbed as he swallowed again.
"That's all. I just… I want you to have a chance, Pyrrha."
A chance to live.
She heard those words, even if he didn't say them, and the wind rustled softly through the tree above them as Pyrrha mentally sat back and digested this tidal flood of information, still meeting his eyes with a wide-eyed gaze of her own.
For a moment, all she was conscious of was that –staring at Jaune, hearing the whispering leaves, feeling her blood pulse through her veins and her breath drag in her chest.
This was stolen from me, Pyrrha thought, and her fingers shook a little as she wove them together, suddenly all-too-aware of the stone beneath her, the scent of her drink, everything about this moment of being alive, and being here with Jaune. In the future, this is not supposed to exist.
And Jaune, struggling through the muddy swamp of his feelings, had done his best to tell her that he didn't want that. He didn't want her to be the girl who died heroically –and alone– on Beacon's tower.
He wanted her to be Pyrrha Nikos –however she chose to be.
If she chose to cut what they had –what they were beginning to have– dead, then that was her choice, and he would respect it, because she was alive (oh so gloriously alive) to actually make that choice, and that was enough for him.
Her life, to live as she pleased, was enough for him.
It was more than enough.
Pyrrha sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes, doing her best to think.
"I think," she said, very slowly and carefully, "that we're a mess."
Jaune's laugh was choked, but it was a laugh all the same. Pyrrha opened her eyes again, giving him a smile that was just on the uncertain side of shy.
She reached across the table to take his hand in her own –a natural movement, without thought– and gently squeezed his fingers.
"So I think we should start over." she said.
Jaune blinked at her, and she put more effort into her smile, feeling her shoulders lift.
"I think… that we've changed enough. We're not the same people anymore, so… we can have a fresh start." she said, liking the idea more by the moment. "A clean slate. We can start all over, but… better, this time, because we both know."
Jaune blinked at her, startled, and then she saw him start to mull it over.
You've carried my death with you long enough, Pyrrha wanted to say, and it isn't true, not anymore. I'm not dead, and I won't die. I won't. Not if this is what it does to you.
"I think…" Jaune said hoarsely, and the stormclouds in his eyes lightened just a fraction. "I think that I'd like that."
Pyrrha nodded, and this time the brilliance of her smile was in no way feigned as they looked at each other over the table and both of their expressions grew just a little bit happier.
This was progress.
They drank their drinks and talked quietly about more mundane things, about what happy moments Jaune still remembered with his sisters, about Pyrrha's childhood growing up in Argus, about Nora's shenanigans, about Team JNPR, about their favorite foods. What comics Jaune liked. The one time her mother had surprised her washing dishes shortly after she'd discovered her Semblance, and Pyrrha's squeak of shock had been accompanied by every untethered pot and pan flying outwards around her.
What it had been like to shoot that cereal ad for Pumpkin Pete. Why Jaune liked that cereal so much.
The story behind her ponytail. Jaune's thoughts on the different kingdoms he'd traveled to.
Plans for after the Vytal Festival. Suggestions of which places to visit the next time they went to a peaceful Vale.
Nice, commonplace things that veered as far around both who they were supposed to become and who they had been as possible. She didn't say "date" and neither did he, but as they finished their drinks and wandered hand in hand (she hadn't let go, and he hadn't asked) through the autumnal landscape of Beacon's gardens, Pyrrha felt that neither of them needed to.
They were letting each other have this.
Pyrrha Nikos got to go on a nice, average date, with a boy she liked, without having to worry about the future. Jaune wanted that so badly for her, and Pyrrha wanted to take it, and together they used this moment like a wax seal over a contract stating this will be our fresh start. No obligations, no expectations, no demands, and certainly no rules.
The wind picked up again as they walked down a garden path, sending red leaves scudding about their feet and dancing past them on the breeze. Jaune's hand tightened on hers as maple leaves flicked past, and Pyrrha matched his grip without knowing why –but knowing that he needed it.
"Pyrrha, I…" Jaune began, and she looked at him. The haunted expression was flickering across his face again, and he turned to her like a child towards a nightlight, or like a flower to the sun. "Can I hug you?"
She blinked, but –this was clearly important to him.
"Of course." she said, and turned towards him, letting him wrap his arms around her. Jaune's grip wasn't as fierce as she would have expected, since she had a sneaking suspicion he was reliving –something– of how things had used to be, of how she had died, but the spun-glass gentleness of how he was holding her was terrible in its own way.
They stood like that for several moments, her standing quietly in his arms and letting him take what comfort he needed. It was only when Jaune's body quivered with a slight choking noise that Pyrrha realized he was crying, and she closed her eyes as the bitter pain overwhelmed her. Even knowing that she was alive now, the empathy of the grief he must have been carrying all this time made tears sting her eyes, made her throat clog on a lump of its own.
"I'm sorry," Jaune sobbed into her hair, over and over again. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"
Pyrrha hesitated a moment, and did the only thing she could think of.
She wrapped her arms around him, stretching up onto her toes to snuggle her chin into the crook of his shoulder and neck. As Jaune cried, she tightened her fingers on the clothes over his back, pressing him closer against her.
"I'm here." Pyrrha said quietly. "I'm here."
While the common rooms of Beacon's dorms were, by definition, public areas open to anyone, there were of course tiers of public spaces that the students –and now, transfers– preferred to use. The first-floor common room was noisiest, since that got the most foot traffic, but the upper-floor ones also tended to get a pretty steady flow of bookworms and other quiet students looking for a place outside their rooms to get a little peace.
Ruby, as the leader of her team, had done her best to keep an eye on the activity levels of all the various common rooms of the Beacon dorms for a while now, trying to select the best one.
The best time to arrange a meeting –because between SSSN, Penny, JNPR, RWBY, and Qrow, one dorm room really wasn't big enough to hold them all– in one of the common rooms was just after lights-out, on one of the middle floors, and in the common room closest to the school building, since even the implicit lingering presence of teachers was enough to shoo most students away from the main building.
"Well, plan kinda according to plan." Sun sighed, magnificently shirtless in the yoga pants that were apparently all he wore to bed. "Two out of four isn't bad, right?"
"I hope my teammates don't get in trouble about my poor performance." said Penny, who wore her normal clothes due to the whole not-needing-sleep thing.
"This have anything to do with how badly you guys did in the team rounds?" Qrow asked with a raised brow, the only one aside from Penny who was not dressed in his sleeping clothes.
"We told Ozpin this when we did our last-minute signups, but the only reason we're really in the tournament is to get the tournament passes in case of emergency." Yang said. "Cinder's not stupid –just 'cause she got caught doesn't mean everything's over yet. We figured she'd plan around our teams being finalists, so if we got knocked out of the tournament, there's less chance of any of her backup schemes going through."
"A-yup." Qrow scratched his stubbly check. "That's a smart move, Firecracker."
"It's been two weeks since she was arrested." Weiss said, a decided frown tilting her mouth. "The White Fang have gone to ground, but that could just as easily mean they've given up or they're getting ready for a big attack regardless of Cinder's backing. Blake?"
"With Adam, it could go either way." Blake admitted with a sigh. She picked at the sleeve of her sleeping yukata. "I could… he'd probably answer if I tried to call his Scroll…"
"Denied." said everyone at once.
"We're taking out a thousand-mile restraining order on your behalf." Nora said, scowling and kicking her heels from where she was sprawled belly-down on the coffee table. "Or is it his behalf? Fuck it, we aren't doing anything for that creep. Your behalf."
"Besides, s'not like the dude would give us anything useful." Sun huffed. Beside him, Scarlet nodded.
"Yeah, and if we really wanted information about how the White Fang were moving, we've got Ilia."
"He's not worth the data you'd use to send the message." Yang agreed, sliding a warm arm around Blake's shoulders. They shared a moment with each other, before Qrow coughed.
"As touching as that all is… what about Ilia?" he asked. "How's that kid doing?"
They had left the decision of how much to tell Ozpin and the others about Ilia to Ilia and Blake's discretion, and Ilia had said that it'd be okay to tell the headmaster and his group about her after she left Beacon. It made sense: they had no real way to arrest her now, but Ilia could still rely on Hunter backup if things went south.
"Camping outside the academy grounds with Zwei. She's kinda lowkey patrolling the Emerald Forest." Jaune said, having once again reclaimed the bunny onesie that was his right and staunchly ignoring any looks or sniggers that suggested he might try otherwise. "It's the easiest access point to Beacon, at least for someone trained to deal with Grimm. She's obviously not gonna be able to fight off anyone who comes on her own, but she'll be able to give us some advance warning, at the very least."
"She has been sending many surveillance photos." Penny chipped in brightly. "And only some of them are of Zwei."
"Our timeline's looking good. The first eight of sixteen team matches went through smoothly enough today: the same should go for the remaining eight tomorrow." Ruby said, frowning at her notepad, which was covered in a frenzy of mostly-legible scribbles. "What we're probably gonna have to worry about is the eight doubles matches the day after that, and, of course, the four final matches that evening."
There was a moment of grimacing, teeth-sucking silence as everyone thought about that, remembering Cinder's original plans for the festival.
"Well, Penny and Team RWBY are out, anyway." Ren said into that wincing silence. "That should help."
"Might be good to have us stay in." Neptune suggested, rubbing the back of his neck and looking uncomfortable. "I mean, it's great and all that we want to thwart whatever backups she's got –totally, I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't– just that… maybe we might need someone on the actual ground in Amity Colosseum?"
"Kid's got a point." Qrow rasped, which made Neptune look pleased. "Just because we think it'll be something aimed at the finalists doesn't mean we shouldn't have anyone in the finals. Having someone ready for trouble right there on the scene might make all the difference when the time comes."
"I do like the idea of making sure nothing slips through the cracks." Weiss said, cupping her chin. "But are we sure it should be Team SSSN? You're not… quite Huntsmen level yet."
"Better us than JNPR." Sun said with a candid shrug, before nodding to aforementioned team, sprawled out on a coffee table and one of the couches collectively. "Because Cinder's sure as shit planning for one of them to make it to the finals."
This was depressingly true, Ruby reflected with a sigh.
"And we're not that bad." Scarlet said waspishly, giving Weiss a pointed look. "Just because we're not bloody graduates doesn't mean we'll trip over our own feet…"
She held up her hands, looking apologetic.
There was another round of long, thoughtful silences, interrupted only by a few yawns. Everyone except Qrow had been fighting today, and even losing (convincingly) took energy.
It was interrupted by a beep from Qrow's Scroll, and Ruby watched him click his tongue in annoyance and rummage amongst his pockets. It had been somewhat tacitly acknowledged that Qrow was the best person to act as the in-between for them and Ozpin's group, since Ruby and several of the others were still not entirely comfortable around Ironwood. It even made sense to outsiders for Qrow to be hanging around Team RWBY –he was her and Yang's uncle, after all.
She looked back at her scrawled notes and tried to think like an evil mastermind. How would she manipulate these people into causing trouble?
Ruby crossed out the names of her team and Penny's team, of course, since they no longer applied.
Without someone metallic to tear apart, did Pyrrha still count towards Cinder's nefarious plots? She added a question mark after her friend's name.
Jaune couldn't hurt anyone if he tried, and he got an X through his name. So did Ren. With their mutual tendency for stabbing and slashing attacks, noncombative Semblances, and Ren's calm, it was hard to imagine any scenario in which they could hurt another Hunter student.
Nora got a worried frowny-face next to her name. Magnhild packed a powerful enough punch that she could hurt someone by accident, and even if Nora's bubbly and distracted exterior masked a far more intelligent core, she was still prone to losing herself to her emotions. Even if Ruby wasn't sure how to go about it, she knew Nora could probably be baited into doing what Cinder –or whoever picked up Cinder's plans– wanted.
"Kid." Qrow said, and Ruby's head snapped up the second she registered how tight his voice was, her free hand reaching back for Crescent Rose.
The good news was, her uncle wasn't being threatened by anyone.
The bad news was, he was staring at his Scroll like someone who'd been told they only had twenty minutes to live via a doctor's email.
Everyone's eyes zeroed in on him, each of the thirteen Hunter trainees simultaneously reacting to the tension that they sensed in the room.
Before anyone could ask what he was looking at, Qrow's nimble fingers flipped the Scroll into his palm, using its projector feature as the Hard Light image of his screen shot up to hover midair in the center of the common room.
SERIAL KILLER STALKS VALE:
Four Injured, Two Dead!
Vale's Council Calls For Investigation! Links To Recent Terrorist Attack?
More text scrolled by underneath the screamer headlines, but those already told Ruby enough and more than enough as Qrow stared worriedly into her blank eyes.
Oh.
For a second, she couldn't think at all as one, single, terrified thought pierced Ruby's brain.
That's new.