"What?"

"I am the spring maiden,"

"No way, you...prove it."

Rolling my eyes I closed my eyes concentrating and slowly lifted into the air as a pale green aura pulsed with life and vitality around me, waving an arm a huge swath of grass and small flowers grew to cover the previously cold concrete ground. Dropping to the ground I cringed at the wave of light headedness that washed over me, shaking the exhaustion off I made a mental not to make a habit of over exerting myself like this. "Good enough?"

"Uh sure, so do all the maidens have different powers? Cinder could shoot fireballs and I'm sure she could do other stuff the fireball was the only thing I saw her do though."

Smiling I said "from what I gather yes all the seasons have different powers but for each incarnation of a single season the powers only differ slightly in strength. I myself have several powers, I can manipulate nature..." here I gestured at the grass and flowers "...I can control animals, I can heal people, there is the whole floating thing, oh and I can turn into a dove."

Everyone got a distant sad expression at my last power and I realised they were reminded of me, guilt hit me like a ten tone truck. why was I lying to them like this? Oh yeah if they knew who I was they would take silly risks to protect me, which I didn't want.

The sound of approaching people had all of us moving out of sight and into the woods that bordered the factory yard, one in the trees we kept moving and I was disheartened by the quiet downtrodden atmosphere. Needing to cheer them up I said "come on lighten up you found a maiden thats good right? Now you just gotta find three more and some information, your a quarter of the way there. Come on smile. I don't do well with negativity, being spring I need to be around some form of joy or life and you guys are not really exuding happy and healthy young people right now."

"Sorry if we are disrupting your joy with our grief why don't you go find someone else's joy to leach of."

I flinched at Yangs cold comment I had never heard her speak like that to anyone but an enemy, I rationalised her words as grief but it still hurt. Straightening my back I said "you know what fine, I guess you will be back at square one and have to fine your selves four maidens. You can find me last for all I care." Turning I jumped morphing into a dove mid leap, ignoring the gasps and shouts behind me.

xxx

xxx

Circling slowly I scowled, as much as a bird is able to, at the rapidly darkening sky. My white feathers stuck out starkly against the dusking sky, descending more I dropped into some trees and morphed back to my human form crouching on a tree branch. I had been following team JNPR and what was left of team RWBY ever since I 'left' I hadn't wanted to go, but I also didn't want to be talked to like that by Yang so I left.

Watching them set up camp had become a familiar and welcome part of my routine, once they were all settled in I would scout the area and 'deal' with anything that shouldn't be there.

Camp had been set up so I started my rounds, flying in large circles around the camp. A small speck of light caught my attention, it was on the edge of my perimeter but I decided to investigate. Swooping over I spotted a familiar head of mint coloured hair, a slightly battered looking pink parasol and the lazy form of mercury lounging on a bed roll on the floor.

Landing silently on a branch I listened as the group talked quietly amongst themselves, '...Merc are you sure this was the best idea? You know as well as I do that Salem is ridiculously strong, and with Cinder by her side it will just be worse. The beacon brats will never defeat her on their own."

"Yes that is why we are going to help them, of course they will never accept our help with what we have done so we will have to go about it in a round about way."

Tilting my head in a bird like manner I was loath to admit it but I was intrigued, the possibility that some of our enemies were defecting was...interesting to say the least. If they were on our side many things would be much easier, especially not having to deal with Emerald's illusions or Neo's disguises. The potential for those abilities to be used for our advantage was slowly beginning to sink in, we had all gotten used to the idea of fighting that skill set that working with it would be a learning curve. deciding to test them a little I transformed back into my bird form and glided from my tree to flutter around their camp. As soon as I was seen silence fell on the group and I could feel their eyes on me, swooping closer I eyed the group up close and was shocked by their appearance, all of them looked a little worse for were especially Neo, who looked like she had fallen of an air ship (AN just putting that in there). she was still covered in unhealed scrapes and cuts, which was a clear sign that her aura was seriously depleted or they would have healed allready.

Dropping onto her shoulder I started channeling waves of healing energy into her hoping to do some good, healing was one of the powers I didn't get to use very much so I wasn't 100% confident in my abilities in this area. The sight of the closing cuts and scrapes was reassuring. A started gasp had my head whipping up from where it had been resting on my chest, Emerald was gaping at me her gaze flirting from the healing cuts to my form perched on Neo's shoulder. "Merc?"

"I see it too Em and I have no idea, maybe its a magic Dove?"

The sight of Emerald's hand connecting with Mercury's shoulder and his exaggerated claim of injury, that quickly dissolved into a full fledged argument had me giggling however in this form it came out as more of a stilted trilling. Apparently though it wasn't hard to interpret as Emerald turned around and whispered "Merc...it's laughing at us. I...I...I don't...what?"

This reaction just increased my amusement, this was good. Waves of amusement rolled off Neo at the others antics and I was basking in it. I needed this...positivity and humour, I had been beginning to flag slightly. To sustain myself I had to be around love, life and happiness, the other group had been enough to keep me alive but they weren't enough to replenish my aura. For that I needed real joy or at least to feel happiness, and right now this moment was the happiest I could remember feeling since I 'died'.

I could see I was almost glowing from the energy that was filling me to the point of overflowing, not up to containing the energy I simply let the excess spill over, resulting in a wave of restorative energy that swept through the clearing. Neo's aura was fully replenished as well as both Emerald and Mercury's. The energy kept coming and it caused the grass in the clearing to become flushed with life and little flowers bloomed all over the small area.

Drunk on the happiness filling me and power buzzing in my veins I fluttered off Neo's shoulder and morphed back into my human form, spinning in circles and laughing my joy out for the world to hear.