Well, in truth, the four 'old Huntresses' didn't actually ride off into the night. The second they all put on their helmets (which had mini-scrolls installed so they could talk to each other), Snow asked Rose a pointed question about footwear. Specifically, why she was barefoot when she had specifically sent the brunette off to buy a pair. That was then explained that Rose had stored her purchases in an alleyway a short ways away.

Specifically, a block from the mall at The Poker Hall, a technically illegal (by way of being unregistered) gambling establishment that all four of them happened to like a lot (though for different reasons, and none of them would really admit to it except for Rose).

The four of them slowed to a stop and Dragon shook her head, getting her free hair away from her face before shooting an apologetic look at Blake, who only shrugged and smiled in response, saying she didn't really mind. They dismounted as Rose and Snow did the same and the four headed for the entrance of The Poker Hall. They stopped right next to it and Rose turned to the wall. Then she pulled out a set of connected fake bricks and showed them what was inside. A good pair of buckled black combat boots and a pair of small boxes. In fact...

"Is that a ring box, Rose?" Dragon asked.

Rose smiled. "Yep. Found them at a pawn shop."

"You went to a pawn shop?" Snow asked, incredulously deadpan.

"Yep."

"And you bought boxes?"

"Nope, but I'm glad I did buy them." Rose said simply as Dragon twitched.

"...What?" Snow was utterly confused by Rose's statement. The girl always did like to confuse the heck out of them.

"You'll see." Rose said with a mischievous smile. She put down the obviously high-quality combat shoes and kneeled with boxes in hand. Her smile dimmed, though it never faded, and she spoke somberly. "Now, I know that this is kinda cheap of me, and this could never replace the memories of forging things by your own hand, but until we can get things that can be of that caliber, I hope that these will be good placeholders." First, she slid open the longer box, revealing a long, thin dagger with a few runes for decoration, some of which seemed hastily done and definitely familiar.

Dragon gasped as she saw where she thought this was going. Rose was giving Snow temporary replacements of why they'd had before they'd woken up in remnant. This particular knife was a close approximation of the first quality knife Snow had ever forged by herself. It had been done while everybody else was sleeping and as a work of art, not a weapon (even if it had been useful as such). Still, it was a truly amazing thing she'd done, and Rose handed over the replacement to Snow with reverence.

"Rose, you didn't ha-" Snow began to protest, but Rose cut her off.

"Oh, but I did." Then she waved at the knife in Snow's hand dismissively. "Besides, the dagger is unimportant. This, however..." She paused as she pulled up the ring box and opened it as if she was going to propose. It was a shining gold band with 2 sapphires embedded in the top. There was a third gem setting in the middle, but it was empty, and the ring itself was pitted and marred, but it was beautiful, and it was like the one Rose had found for Snow some years before that had been stolen by a magpie after a particularly bad fight with some Beowolves. They'd never been able to track it down, but Rose had remembered. Delicately and still kneeling, Rose threaded the ring onto Snow's left hand. Before standing, she held Snow's hand tightly, looking her in the eye as she rose, and stated, "Snow, one day I'm going to take away this ring and replace it with a better one, hand-forged and as beautiful as you are, ready for anything life can bring to the challenge table. Until then, this ring will stand as my physical promise to keep you safe and happy." Rose hugged the woman close. "I love you Snow White, and nothing will ever change that. You understand me girl?"

After a moment of stunned silence, Snow hugged the brunette closer as her eyes dropped closed. "Yes, yes I do. And I will gladly accept you, if you'll have me."

Rose snorted. "That's my line." She said irelessly and nuzzled in closer.

After a moment, they came apart. "Not to be a complete spoilsport, but we still need dinner." Dragon mentioned casually now that the moment was over.

"Nope." Rose said brightly. "I ordered on the way here. Pizza for the four of us."

"But you didn't ask us." Snow pointed out.

Rose gave her a smiling look. "We haven't had pizza in a while, we've pretty much exhausted all other takeout options for the next month or two, other than pizza, and Blake and Dragon, who aren't going to simply abandon us after such a scare, haven't had a pizza in a while as well. Additionally, I'm the only one who actually changes toppings between pizzas, so 3 medium pepperoni, onion, and sausage pizzas, 2 for them to share, and a Large Meat Lover's with onion and their special ranch sauce for the 4 of us to share."

Snow blinked as she ran it through her head and came to the same conclusion as Dragon. "That's really well-through out." Dragon nodded her agreement.

Rose smiled. "Yep. Of course, that sort of thinking makes me wonder why Blake and Dragon haven't started making out yet."

"W-what?!" Dragon sputtered out, her face suddenly burning. It was true that they'd never actually kissed, romantically speaking, other than those two times (once was her getting antivenom into Blake's system and completely business, while the other was just to help hide in plain sight while trailing a guy who'd tried to kill Snow, which, also, just business. No romantic feelings whatsoever from that). She absolutely refused to make eye contact with Blake as she sputtered out "I-But, we- that's not-"

Rose's laughter cut off her protests, confused the blonde enough that she was more focused on Rose than spouting unintelligible words. "Oh, don't worry guys. I was only joking." For some reason, that one sentence disappointed her and filled her with more dread than most things Rose did. Partly from simply existing, but mostly from the feeling that there was another shoe out there, waiting to drop onto their heads and stomp. "I knew you guys were already that close from that time we all had Mergin Pox." And there it was, Dragon's thought popped up as her blush got even stronger. The mere mention of that particular disease brought back some memories, some pleasant, others, not so much, that basically told her that she should just give up and do whatever Rose wanted already (though, first step there would be to find out what that actually is).

Dragon was vaguely aware of Blake had been making the same protests, which was confirmed by the raging blush on the faunus' face when she chanced a glance. Though, there was a slight shifty-ness to the raven-haired woman that hadn't been there before.

Rose pulled her attention back to the red-frosted one. "Well, now that we've got that over and done with, let's go home and eat!" She said, jumping into her new combat shoes with that exclamation. "Come on! We gots pizzas tah eats!" And Rose scurried off to the motorcycles. Snow and Dragon looked at each other, shrugged, and ambled after their de facto leader.

Suddenly, Rose stopped, turned around and shouted, "FREEZE!", effectively freezing the three of them in place. "Back away from the door kitty kat!"

Dragon looked back and, to her half-surprise, saw Blake with a guilty expression on her face, hand halfway stretched to grasp the doorknob to The Poker Hall. "But-" Blake began weakly.

"No." Rose said firmly. "We have pizza. We do not need to gamble."

Blake pulled in a breath, centered her stature and gathered her courage, and then spoke boldly, hands at her sides. "One, two quick hands and I can pay you back for the entire month."

"No." Rose said. "Besides, I already told you you didn't need to pay me back. Now back off!"

Loss of stature. Yep, Blake was about to start whining. Honestly, it was amazing what Rose could do to the confident Faunus, and it was even more amazing the lengths said cat would go to to get Rose around to her line of thinking."But-"

Rose's hand whipped out from her pocket to point at the wall as if she was brandishing a sword. "I've got batteries! And I'm not afraid to use em!" Blake hesitated, then began to reach for the doorknob again, despite the fact that Rose was watching. Rose smirked. "Don't say I didn't warn ya!" Then she spun around, pointed at the wall, and gasped before saying "What is that?!"

Naturally, Blake couldn't help herself, and looked. There wasn't anything out of the or- a glowing red dot. Damn. Looks like she finally got around to fixing that thrice-darned laser pointer.

Must.

Resist.

Urge.

To Chase!

Blake, of course, was completely helpless against the taunting little red dot, and chased after it, which quickly led to Rose shoving a small bundle of herbs in her face, mint from what Dragon could smell from here, and Blake relaxed, pupils blown wide and body now languid. As contented purring began to fill the air, Rose and Dragon looked at each other. Rose spoke first, and then Dragon responded, both women using the same "your fault, your mess, you clean it up" monotone that was rather unique to this type of arguments in their experience.

"Your roommate."

"Your mint."

"You chose her."

"You found her first."

"You made her sword."

"You made her a Nevermore coat."

"You helped Minnas."

"You tried to kill me."

"And your point there?" Rose asked reasonably and Dragon scowled. Damn, true. Rose tries to kill everyone. That, and she'd already used it for this month.

"Well what about-"

"No. Your cat, you bring her home."

"But we're going to the same place anyway."

"Or we could just sit here squabbling until she wakes up and can choose for herself." Snow interjected amicably, as if this conversation did nothing but bore her.

Dragon looked over at Rose, who looked at her and shrugged, and so the blonde picked up the goober-eyed faunus and walked over to the bike, wrapping the woman around her to keep her from falling off, and the four of them sped off towards Winter Rose's General Store.

Pointless conversation was still conversation, and arguments were always fun, especially with Rose.

The drive home was uneventful, the talking about their days over pizza fun and full of laughter at the funnier stories, and once they retired to beds (Rose's bed was a bunk bed with Snow snuggled up next to Rose and Blake and Dragon cuddled like normal on the top bunk, without a thought to Rose's earlier teasing) the 3 who weren't Rose were deep in thought until they fell asleep. Blake was purring deeply in her happy sleep, a commodity that was actually somewhat rare for them, and Rose enjoyed listening to the woman's second set of vocal cords rumbling like an 18-wheeler in the quiet room.

Rose looked down at Snow for a moment before carefully removing herself from the bottom bunk, Snow making a small sad whimper as she left. She placed a Dust-heated person-sized pillow in Snow's arms, feeling a little guilty about it, but only for a moment after seeing Snow's contented expression come back.

Slowly, painfully slowly, Rose went through a series of stretches to check on her muscles. No matter how she may act, she knew that if her body wasn't in prime condition, she might let Snow down, let her die. And as durable as the four of them were, they were no longer children, and they most definitely weren't gods. Her face twitched as various muscles twinged, mostly from the earlier fight with the Ursa, but a few from previous injuries that had yet to heal. But, if it came down to it, she could always just kill whatever stood in her way, just like always. No injury could really put her down for the count, not like the Grimm of early existence or the people who'd given her the title of Monster.

That's what she was, after all. A soulless monster whom had been repurposed by a saint to defend, rather than just destroy. And that's all she'll ever be.

Almost as slowly as the stretches from earlier, she put on some clothing she had laying around, set up to make it easier to fight, along with the combat shoes she'd bought earlier, much as it pained her to do so, both physically and in annoyance. This time, she made sure to grab a sword before she left, and loaded for bear. Well, Ursa, but the worst case scenario was unlikely in the extreme, from what she'd seen of the continent of Vytal. Though, she hadn't seen all that she could, and she wanted to participate in this year's Vytal Festival, especially the tournament. Snow generally approves of those tournaments.

She stood and paused, looking over her loved ones carefully. It had been a while since she'd simply stopped and enjoyed the serenity of such a scene, with Blake and Dragon trying to eat each others' hair in their sleep and Snow looking peacefully asleep.

Rose didn't need sleep. It was useful, but not needed. Besides, she wanted to know something.

She grabbed her personal home-made Scroll from the desk where it was safe and sent a community message to Blake's, Dragon's, and Snow's Scrolls. Snow's chimed from the bedside table, where it was being used as a clock, and left out the now-open window to put action to the words inside the message.

"Hey. Sorry I left in the middle of the night, but I have an errand to run at Beacon Academy; You know, the huge castle on top of the cliffs overlooking Vale? Well, I should be home by, say, 3:30 PM if I don't run into any snags (like the greater Grimm in the surrounding forest or something like that).

~Rose Rubellite of the Red Riding Hood"

A few seconds after Rose had left, another message popped up on their Scrolls.

"Oh, P.S. - Don't open the Shops, wear good combat gear, minus Snow's cape - Preferably, that is - and I kinda wanna invite Mr. Arbiggotti and Mr. Crowly for Dinner tonight. Just a yes or a no.

~Rose Rubellite of the Red Riding Hood"

Yeah, I know this was a shorter-than-usual chapter, but I got lazy this week and didn't write during today's rest day. No school (because I'm too sick to drive for an hour and pay attention and do stuff right) and no work (not scheduled), and yet, no writing done. Sigh. Oh well! Since I'm that much of a slacker, here's the good stuff that I actually have written and I hope you guys like it! :)