Foreign Exchange
chapter 9:In The Shadows
Ruby was getting sick of the atmosphere today.
She knew that initiation was going to be difficult. Both her uncle Qrow and her father, Taiyang, had warned her that it was a hard process, and to stick through it no matter what.
But even with all of those warnings, she felt like she was nowhere near prepared for this.
She could handle Grimm, okay? Clickers, Mongrels, Surface Creeps, Widow-Makers, she could handle that.
But freaky, disturbing ten-foot-tall monsters that don't die?
Yeaaaaah, no. That was not on the agenda.
She wasn't the only one, apparently. Looking around with the three others she was traveling with, she saw that Pyrrha was quietly scanning the skyline, her Javelin in her hand and ready to fight if need be. Yang had her weapons in bracelet form, but was ready to put them out at a moment's notice. Shavo seemed pretty nervous too, staring dead ahead as he flicked the safety on his rifle over and over again.
They were all pretty wound up at the moment, and it was pretty obvious why.
That thing.
Both She and Shavo had encountered it briefly before, her more so when it tried to chase after her when she was leading away the Grimm. Then, just a few hours ago, her sister and Pyrrha had seen it as well, and they all had to fight it.
It's not that it was hard to take down, not really. Sure, it was stronger, faster, and much more scarier than the average Grimm, but it wasn't armored. It seemed pretty fragile.
But that wasn't the problem, now was it?
No, the problem was the thing apparently doesn't die. It could get cut up, blown up, gunned down, and was still chasing after them when it pieced itself together. How were they supposed to deal with that, exactly?
At least it can't go into the sunlight, apparently. At first she was confused as to why it had been outside earlier yesterday, but Shavo pointed out the streets were mostly covered in shadows from the buildings. So apparently it can't travel in direct sunlight.
"Hey, you know how normally something important is in a large, important looking building?"
Everyone was broken from their thoughts by Shavo, the first person to speak in the past two hours.
"Yes." Pyrrha said uncertainly. Shavo, without looking at them, pointed ahead of him blankly.
"Well, I believe we may have found our artifacts."
Looking up and ahead, The four saw a large coliseum esque building looming over them, rising higher than all of the other buildings and mostly intact. The entrance was wide open, gates swaying in the wind and beckoning for them to come in.
But there another feature that drew their attention, the two people standing in front of it's entrance talking.
Two figures in black and white.
"I'm telling you, there's something wrong here." the black haired girl said to the white one. Ruby didn't recognize her, but the girl in white with the ponytail she recognized. What did Shavo say her name was again, Weiss?
"I understand." Weiss said as she scratched her chin, hand resting on the hilt of what looked like a rapier. "It's far too easy to get here. There has to be something waiting for us in there."
"If it's anything worse than what we ran into, I'm am seriously going to sit in the corner and cry."
The two girls turned around in surprise to see the group of four standing behind them, Shavo having been the one to talk as he put the rifle over his shoulder and gave them a two finger salute.
"Hello again." He greeted. Weiss gave him a bit of a glare before looking to her left and instantly brightening up.
"Pyrrha! It's good to see you!" She said happily. Pyrrha nodded back to her happily, all of their minds now getting taken off of the Freak Show from earlier.
"And you as well, Weiss. How has initiation been for you so far?" Pyrrha asked politely. Weiss nodded before gesturing to the girl with the black bow.
"Very much so, as you can see by my partner over here. Pyrrha, this is Blake." She introduced them all to her, said girl just waving politely with a tiny smile.
"Hello." Was all Blake said. She looked at Shavo for a second before turning back to the building behind her.
Not the most social person Ruby had met today.
"So what about you? Which of these people are your partner?" Weiss asked the champion. Before she could answer, Yang butted in with a happy grin as she pointed to herself.
"That would be me: Yang Xiao-Long." She said brightly before sticking out her hand. As they talked to each other, Ruby saw Shavo walk past them and over to Blake and inspected the building. She chose to follow, standing to his left as he looked around at the buildings design with a scrutinizing gaze.
"What do you think could be in there?" He asked no one in particular. "I imagine it would either be a large group of regular Grimm, a few big Grimm, or something monstrous and horrifying."
"I haven't heard anything from outside, so nothing like Mongrels or Clickers." Blake offered. "Could be a few Berzerkers wandering around."
"Maybe some Surface Creeps?" Ruby proposed. "They don't make much noise."
"Possibly." Blake agreed with her. At least this time, Ruby wasn't so awkward that she couldn't speak with a simple stranger.
"Well, that all sounds lovely and terrifying." Shavo said as he stepped closer to it, stroking his goatee and scrutinizing the building. "But I think there's a big question we're missing here."
He then turned back around and held his arms out to his sides.
"What exactly are we just standing around here for?"
Ruby heard a 'humph' come from behind her and turned to see Weiss was walking up to her partner, hands on her hips as she gave him the stink eye.
"What, and just go in without a plan?" She said snottily. "We need to think this through, not just go in guns blazing. This requires time, you dunce."
Shavo just raised an eyebrow at her as he stayed silent before looking behind her to Yang.
"Either of you three wanna explain it to her, or should I?" He asked nonchalantly. Weiss looked between him and the other three girls as they all shook their heads 'no'.
"You can go ahead." Yang waved him on.
"Well, you see Ms. Schnee, about two-to-three hours ago, we fought off this big, scary ass looking monster."
"Swear!" Ruby called out, to which Shavo spared her a quick glance before turning back to Weiss.
"Yes, swear. Anyways, this thing apparently is unable to die, super fast, strong, the works. Luckily for us, this thing apparently can't walk around in the sun."
Both Weiss and Blake looked like they were pretty sceptical, so Ruby stepped up to the heiress with her head bowed as she cleared her throat.
"U-Uhm… I can vouch for that." She said timidly, remembering the words of Shavo about how scary this girl could be. "I was able to cut it right down the middle… But it still got back up."
"Yeah, even Pyrrha and I couldn't take the thing down." Yang added in as they all began to gravitate towards the entrance before pointing to Shavo. "It took this guy over here to blow it up with a couple of grenades just to get away from it."
Weiss looked over to Pyrrha for confirmation, which was returned with a nod.
"They're telling the truth, Weiss. While I agree with you that we should have a plan, we can't be wasteing time. It's already eleven, and the sun will be setting at around seven to eight. Seeing as how the trip back to the cliff, even if we were to hurry, would take quite a while…"
"We need to do this as quickly as possible." Blake finished for the amazonian as she looked to the entrance, then to Weiss. "I'm up for it if you are."
Every head turned to the white clad girl, waiting for an answer. She huffed before stomping on the ground.
"Well it's not like I have a choice now!" She said before crossing her arms. "Let's just hurry up and do this."
With that, they all began to walk up to the entrance, a staircase leading up to a wide open stadium door. Looking in, they could see it was a long hallway leading into an arena. Ruby saw Shavo ready his rifle and turn to them, unintentionally striking a pose with one foot higher on the stairs than the other.
"How about this: We go in, grab the relics, and get out as fast as we can." He asked them. "Sound good?'
"I'm game!" Ruby was quick to support her partner. She was followed by varying agreements and the sound of weapons preparing for battle.
"Alright then." He said with a small grin as he turned back to the door. "Let's do this."
With that, they all charged into the doorway and down the hallway, their footfalls echoing loudly as they aimed their weapons, ready to attack the first sign of any Grimm that would be waiting for them.
Needless to say, it was pointless.
They barged into a large, gray stone arena with dark sand and gray pillars sticking out of the ground surrounding a large circular platform. They all looked around, keeping a keen eye out for any sort of movement that could have belonged to a benevolent monster, but saw nothing.
They were alone.
"Wait… There's really nothing here?" Yang said disbelievingly. "No giant monster to fight? Nothing?"
"Yang, I think that technically, there is a giant monster for us to fight." Pyrrha said. "But somehow, it got out and came looking for us."
"Kind of like a video game boss that comes early or something." Ruby thought out loud. She saw Weiss give her a snooty look and cringed, but righted herself when she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Shavo giving her a supportive grin.
"That's actually a pretty accurate description." He said before turning back to the platform, an onyx black stage lifted off the ground. "Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I want to see what the heck these artifacts are."
"Yeah, come on!" Yang cheered as she began to run. "Last one there's a rotten berry!"
"Oh, you're on, Xiao Long!" Shavo laughed as he ran after her. Ruby watched them go before hearing Weiss sigh in annoyance from behind her.
"Dear Oum, please don't tell me they're going to be like this all the time." She said as she rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"Oh come on Weiss, they're not that bad." Pyrrha smiled, looking at Shavo with a glint in her eye.
'Wonder what that's all about.' Ruby thought to herself before looking back to the stage. She smiled before getting into a running pose and using her semblance to blow by Yang and Shavo, sending them spinning around and to the ground.
"CHEATER!" They both yelled in tandem as they tried to get up. Shavo slipped on the sand and back onto his bottom before he saw a hand reach out to help him and saw Yang grinning down at him. He took the hand before she lifted him up effortlessly.
"Holy shit Yang, what do you bench, Semi-trucks?' He asked jokingly. Yang shrugged before turning around and sauntering off.
"More than you can count, big guy." She smiled before reaching the stairs and walking up. Ruby thought it was kind of weird, because she only does that when she's wanting guys to look at her.
'Could she be doing that for...Shavo?' She thought about it before shaking her head. 'Naaaah, Yang's too into blond guys.'
The crimsonette's thoughts were interrupted as her hood was grabbed and pulled over her head. She struggled out of it to see the subject of her thoughts grinning at her.
"Aaack! Yang! Stop!"
"Don't think you won, you little cheater." The blond playfully smacked her younger sister's shoulder. "No semblances allowed."
"Well, then maybe you should have specified that before you started the race." Ruby defended as she crossed her arms.
"I'm pretty sure that would just be a regular rule in general." Shavo said as he stepped up onto the stage as well, followed closely by Pyrrha, Blake and Weiss. He then turned over to the middle of the platform, podiums with tiny strings hanging something over them. Shavo squinted at them before getting a disbelieving look as he walked up to them.
"No freaking way." He muttered out as everyone else walked up to them as well. They all gained similar looks of disbelief before Blake stated the obvious.
"They're… Playing cards."
True to her word, hanging from the strings were a mix of playing cards, showing kings of diamonds, queens of hearts, ace of spades, so on and so forth. And to Ruby's surprise, she saw that there were already some missing.
"So i'm guessing that since there are two of each card, these will determine our team." Pyrrha said aloud.
"Why am I not surprised." Shavo snorted as he looked closely at one before clapping loudly and turning around. "Alright, we're burnin daylight, people. Let's pick a card and get on our way."
He then turned to Ruby and nodded to her.
"You can go ahead and pick it."
Ruby looked up at him with a surprised expression.
"Wait, really?" She asked. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, it's fine." He nodded before walking to the edge of the platform and standing guard as he cradled his rifle.
With that, she turned back to the cards and began to study them intensely.
'What is one that he would be happy with…' She thought as she looked closely at an two of diamonds. She looked over to see that Yang and Pyrrha had grabbed a five of spades.
'Oh, let's try that one!' She thought happily before grabbing a nearby card that looked like the one her sister grabbed. With that done, she walked back over to her partner and waited for the others to pick their cards.
As she stood there and looked around, Shavo nudged her in the arm with his elbow lightly to get her attention.
"So which one did you pick?' He asked her. She brought out the card and held it up for him to see.
"Do you like it?" She asked expectantly. Shavo chuckled as he ruffled her hair.
"Of course I like it." He said. She swatted at his hand as he brought it back. " If you like it, it's fine with me."
Ruby brightened up at that, putting the card into one of her combat skirt's pockets. By then, the other two partners had found their own cards and made their way over to them.
"We ready to go?" Blake asked.
"I am if you are." Yang said as she took her card and stuck it into a pouch on her belt.
"Alright then." Shavo said as he turned and walked down the stairs. "Let's get out of here."
No one objected, following not far behind him as they all made their way to the exit. All of their weapons were out and ready, prepared to attack at the first moment's notice.
Every second, they were ready to attack anything that would come out and get them.
But nothing did.
They walked back outside into the cool autumn air, no sound except for the natural environment. Looking around, there was no difference from when they went inside.
They were safe for the time being.
'Then why does it feel like something's wrong here?' Ruby thought to herself worriedly. She saw that everyone else was thinking something similar, waiting for something to pop out and get them.
But still, nothing changed.
"Can we just hurry up and get out of here?" She asked timidly. "I really don't like this."
"I agree." Pyrrha hefted her spear as she nodded along with her. No one else seemed opposed to the idea, looking down the road.
"Alright then." Shavo said. "Let's get the hell outta here."
With that, they all began to jog down the road, back to Beacon cliffs.
None of them saw the tall, hunched over figure watching them from the shadows.
A/N:
Hey everybody. Triple T here with another chapter of Foreign Exchange.
Alright everyone, I have a bit of a problem here, and it pertains to this story. Obviously, you all have seen that there is a romantic element present, involving characters such as Yang, Pyrrha, Shavo and Penny. But here's the problem: I cannot make decisions to save my life. So, I have a request for you dear readers.
Help me pick the Love Interest.
Now I know that this is considered unprofessional, having readers make decisions for the story, but I'm not too worried about that. After all, this is fanfiction, not Simon & Schuster. It would work like it normally does, the options displayed and the winner picked through a voting system.
So who shall it be?
Pyrrha: The indestructible girl, Pyrrha Nikos, has fallen. Not in battle, but in love! Caught by the strange boy with the strange past, can she show him just how she truly feels?
Yang: Yang has always used her looks and strength to get her way. But can they help her with her current problem, getting her little sister's new partner to like her?
Penny: The artificial andriod was designed to be exactly like a human. Feel emotions, such as anger, joy, pain, happiness. Now she's feeling one that she can't quite compute: love.
Ruby: The adorkable girl with the scary scythe has a problem… She likes her partner! By literally running into his life, Ruby can't help but look at Shavodan in a way that she's never seen anyone before!
Weiss: Classic Tsundere! At first, Weiss thought of this goateed teen as nothing more than a nuisance… But why is he still on her mind? Could it be… Dear Oum, could it be she likes him!?
Blake:Blake came to Beacon for one reason: She felt wrong for having hurt people, so now she would become a huntress and help them instead. But what if something else came, instead? SOmething she just wasn't quite expecting, jumping into her corner of the tree?
Those are the options. Obviously, it can't be someone like Glynda or Emerald. Just say who you guys want, PM or Review if you so choose, and whoever has the most votes will win. Let's try to keep it at three chapters before I choose the winner.
Also, how are you today? Lookin' pretty good, reader. Did you do something with your hair? That, uhhh, that a new pair of jeans you wearing?
Stay sexy everybody.
Triple T.
Reviews:
TriggerShotX: Glad to see your interested.
Guest: No problem, my man. I love writing this stuff.
Guest: …
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*High fives you*
ImaRussian: I'm glad that you enjoyed my feeble efforts at a story. And don't worry, it won't be too long before things are revealed.
Roach99: The thing is, I don't understand WHY THE HELL EVERYONE THINKS THEY'RE GOING TO BE A TEAM. You have to find the ARTIFACTS, and they HAVE NOT FOUND THE ARTIFACTS.
But, I'm glad that you were interested enough to offer the suggestion.
And to be painfully honest, do I really HAVE to follow the color rule? This is my story, after all, where everything is super different. Why couldn't that change as well?
titansFire: That, good sir, is a good question. And don't worry, the nut shots are going to be toned down a bit for now. Penis jokes are completetly immature….
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BUT IT WAS FUNNY, HUH?
And to be honest, I may have to push the rating up pretty soon, most likely on accounts of gore and language, maybe with some sexual situations. The whole reason that I'm hesitant to bring it up is simply for the fact that it will get less views if I do that, seeing as how you have to go down and turn the filter up to M, and not everyone does that. But, I guess now I have a pretty decent following that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
weasel AKA boundedsumo: Okay, so to be honest, i didn't open up the pic all the way and thought that it was some weirdly animated cartoon girl with a wide mouth, but then I looked closer at it.
Still an interesting pic, though.
NoGutsNoGlory: It… It wasn't… Supposed to be….?
I just really like vaping.
Justus80: Yes, that comparison is what I was going for. And I have a name, it will be revealed soon enough.