The Shadow of Fire
Chapter 7: The "New" girl at Beacon
"No one can help you now... Not even your precious God, Orion."
The next day...
Tuesday, December 21st
Beacon Team RWBY dorm room
8:39 AM
"Blake! What the hell happened back there?!" Weiss shouted at Blake, who had been quiet ever since they arrived back at Beacon. All throughout dinner, dessert, and breakfast the Faunus was completely quiet, a look of panic and worry adored her cat-like face. Weiss and Yang both noticed this, along with the quick glances that she would take towards their unconscious team leader who was sleeping on Weiss's bed.
Weiss knew deep down that Blake was just worried and scared just like everyone else. Anyone would if they had seen what Ruby was about to do. But if Weiss was being honest to herself, she felt angry at Blake. If Blake had known that Ruby would turn into... that thing, than she should have done something sooner to prevent it.
"Weiss! Don't yell at her!" Yang yelled back at the same volume, her eyes flickering red momentarily. Only she was allowed to yell at Blake, no one else, especially the ice princess.
Weiss ignored the loud voice that was Yang and took a quick glance at Orion, who had been staring outside the widow ever since everyone woke up.
"What happened to her Orion? You know everything."
Orion looked down at his hands and clenched them tightly into a fist, his whole body flickering. "I... Can't say Weiss... But you know the answer already." The God said simply, his voice in a weak tone, turning to Weiss. The God seemed to look much older than he was moments ago. "I will ask you the same question that I asked you before: what happens when you mix Dust?"
Weiss thought and gave her answer, coming to realization as she spoke. "Growth of limbs and... Personality change..."
Blake gave a harsh sigh. "She's a Faunus now Weiss. We are animals too, but also human. We have a powerful and smart body, brain and heart, but we have animalistic cravings as well. Once a Faunus is born, they go through stages of development. We start off wild but by the time we reach the age of six or seven, it ends. We mature. Ruby didn't have the seven years, so she had very little control." Blake responded, her voice becoming weak as she kept talking, never talking that much in one go before.
"Also, princess, I didn't know Ruby wasn't strong enough to control it. Personally, I thought that she was going to be able to power over it... I guess I was wrong."
Weiss slouched down in her chair, slamming her forehead down on the table that was set up in the center of the room, knocking over a glass of milk that was set out for Ruby by Weiss.
Orion gave a harsh groan, grabbing at his chest as if he was dying. The three awake girl raced to his side, Yang keeping the God from falling.
"Are you okay Orion?" Yang asked, concern filling her voice.
Orion looked down at the teens surrounding him. "Girls... I'm not going to be able to stay here... My brothers and sisters are angry at me for my actions here... I..." Orion gave a harsh groan. "Have to go."
"What?" The trip of girl nearly shouted out, all eyes locking with the God.
"I can't stay, if I do..." The God shuddered. "It could alter time and space." Orion lied, recalling the last time this happened.
"But... What about Ruby, what if we need you again?" Weiss asked, speaking for the group.
"You will need to deal with it I suppose, once I am back home I can better support you all, but only a little and from a distance. If I were to come back... I could only be here momentarily."
Orion's body glowed a harsh white light, causing the teens to avert their eyes from the blinding light.
"Orion..." Weiss muttered out.
Weiss hated goodbyes.
"I'll do my best to keep you all safe... I promise." Orion spoke before the light vanished and the God was gone.
Yang rubbed her now watery eyes due to the intensity of the now extinguished light. "Well, that was a thing."
Ruby's Mind
8:49 AM
The first thing Ruby felt was the pain in her neck.
All she could remember was that one minute she was swinging Crescent Rose around a group of White Fang and then next thing she knew, she was here, in this... Dark void of some sort.
Ruby pressed her right hand to her neck, a weak attempt to remove the pain that was present around the area. To her surprise, the injury seemed to become more distant. Ruby felt as if a ton of bricks had been lifted off her shoulder, which was pretty much the only good thing in this situation.
Ruby could see her body, her hands and legs were still there, along with the rest of her. The young teen looked at the darkness around her, spotting nothing notable that she could identify.
"Hello!" Ruby shouted out, a bit of panic overwhelming her rather calm and cheerful attitude.
'Am I dead?' The Faunus girl thought.
"Nope, just knocked out." A seemingly familiar voice spoke out in response, although nothing was present in the teen's surroundings.
"Orion?" Ruby asked into the darkness, taking a few steps forward. "Is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me. Listen kid, I can't stay long. Things in the land of the deities has gotten... a tad messed up with my interference on this planet. I don't think I can talk to you all ever again, but know this... I will do my best to protect you all, I promise." Orion explained to the younger teen. "I already explained this to your teammates and left already. So it seems that this is goodbye."
"But..." Ruby began but was cut off by the deity.
"It's fine Ruby, everything's fine. You will wake up soon. Just remember to look on your dresser when you wake up, Weiss and I got you a little something a while ago." Orion said and abruptly stopped talking for a few seconds. "Goodbye Ruby Rose. It was a... pleasure to have met you."
And with that, Orion's voice disappeared, leaving Ruby alone in the darkness.
Saturn Laos's command center
Main chamber
8:52 AM
Saturn sat comfortably in his throne, happily sipping a glass of red wine as he usually did every morning, as his mind pondered what he was going to do about this business with the leader of the White Fang. The contract placed on those four girls had been created by the leader of the Fangs, something about one of their operatives going rouge or something like that. Saturn didn't care much for the details unless things took a bad turn, just cared for the pay. He, like many modern business men, liked a constant flow of cash. And the White Fang had more than enough to go around.
Saturn had tried to contact the leader for a few... tweaks that he had wanted to be placed in the contract, but his calls weren't going through. Saturn simply didn't care much, once their deaths were confirmed by the Silencers, everything would work out and he would get his payment.
Nice and simple.
The massive doors to the crime lord's chambers flung open, the four Silencers limping in through to entry way up to Saturn's throne.
"You don't look very good my friends, what exactly happened?" Saturn asked in a bored tone, giving a small yawn before rubbing his one good eye.
The leader of the group stepped forward to explain his side of the story, followed by his comrades who gave their versions as well.
Saturn tightly closed his good eye once the last member finished his report, anger beginning to rise inside of him.
"So let me get this straight... You were all beaten by a group of teenagers, an old man, and stole not even a bottle of Dust... And to make matters worse, the girl I shot is still alive?" Saturn asked the group, crushing the glass in his hand, the shards disappearing the moment they left his touch into thin air as if they never existed.
"W-well I think managed to kill the Schnee girl sir. That grenade I threw-"
"Was our only prototype in stock you mindless animal! You ruined the operation and destroyed a vital piece of equipment! I gave not one of you permission to use such a device and for the life of me I can't even understand how you were able to get the weapon in the first place." Saturn began, his eye turning a dark, blood red color. "And you THINK the Schnee heiress is dead? We would know if she was! She has a damn tracker in her skull you idiots! The Schnee family would have known already and made an announcement by now!"
Saturn waved his hand across the air in a slapping gesture towards the four men.
Each Silencers head flung to the right, a large red hand mark appearing on the right side of their faces.
"You have failed me... And there is a cost for failure my friends..." Saturn spoke out coldly. "By the power invested in me, from this point on you are no longer members of the White Fang. I will give you twenty seconds to leave my chambers before I kill you all myself."
With that, the four members raced out of the room, dropping their remaining weapons on the floor in their panic, slamming the door behind them.
Saturn let out a sigh of frustration before pinching the bridge of his nose. This was beginning to become quite the challenge.
"Mr. Laos!" A very feminine voice call out to his right, drawing the crime lords attention.
"Yes?"
A young woman stepped out of the shadows; her long hazel hair flowed gently behind her as she walked, perfectly matching with her brown rabbit ears that adorned her head. She was around 5"9, her green eyes shined brightly in the dark room. Her attire made it very clear why she was here, her dark black jeans, a dark black button up shirt, and a flowing white trench coat similar to a certain crime lords known as Roman Torchwick.
"Hello, my name is Touko Mikasa. I am here to ask you about something involving our, the White Fang organization, contract with you." Touko asked.
Saturn reclined back in his throne. "Yes, go on."
"Our leader, Mr. Crish, suffered a minor dagger to the chest and will not be able to lead the White Fang at this time. With that said, I am now the temporary leader of the White Fang." The woman explained to the crime lord, walking around slowly, her high heels clicking as she walked. "I want to help you with the contract. I will handle our rouge Faunus and her girlfriend while you handle the other two, which have been causing you quite a lot of trouble. You can keep the entire payment as well."
"And why exactly do you want these girls dead? It's really draining my resources; I don't have a hundred troops just waiting around to go in to battle." Saturn demanded, waiting for a reason to keep the contract alive.
"Because of the Faunus, Blake."
Touko gave a growl of anger, remembering the girl. "She was one of our best units, a deadly warrior that was used for only the most dangerous missions. That being said, she knows too much. We refined her skills and made her strong, only able to focus on her battles and not question orders. She knows what we've done and what we have planed. If she were to sit down and think about it, then she would have the knowledge to destroy us, and bring down your organization as well. If her pathetic friends know anything about it, they need to be killed." Touko took a deep breath and looked right at Saturn. "So will you keep our contract?"
Saturn grinned wickedly and clapped his hands together. "Got it. You know what? I feel that you and I are going to do great things Touko... You have yourself a deal."
Ruby's mind
9:21 AM
Ruby paced around the darkness as she had been since Orion left. The young teen didn't know how much time had passed since then, let alone how long she had been passed out in general.
Ruby had done what she usually did when she was alone and bored, games by herself.
She played rock-paper-scissors and eye spy, which was the most difficult thing ever. And to top it all up, the teen managed to play hide and go seek by herself.
The teen felt like she was about to goes crazy until her animalistic traits kicked in, causing her to chase her tail around for what she thought to be about ten minutes. Although very random, it helped pass the time.
Luckily her animal side began to wear off, which allowed her to attempt at controlling this urge to act animalistic. She knew that controlling of this urge was a much needed thing and no matter how hard it was, it was important for her to have. She could possibly hurt someone she cared about if she acted like that.
The young teen paced around the darkness, every once in a while the urge would pop up in her brain, making her entire body shake furiously as she fought of the Faunus control over her body.
'I got to do this, I can't be weak.' The young pup thought.
After a few attempts of slowing down the urge to act wolf-like, the young teen won against one of the Faunus urges.
"Yeah! Ruby one, Faunus... Um... Never mind that Ruby, you just won!" Ruby shouted out, congratulating herself for her minor victory.
Suddenly, she began to feel a bit sick deep in the pit of her stomach, her eyesight slowly fogging up, which wasn't something that she was hoping for. Not at all.
"Ugh oh." Ruby managed to make out.
Blurry images of her friends, family, and people she knew and cared about in general flashed around her. Images of her in class, being made fun of because of her new looks, her friends leaving her behind to be bullied by Cardin and his team, her own family abandoning her. Tears broke out upon the teen's face, buried stress from the moment she looked in a mirror at the hospital emerging from the grave that she mentally stored it in.
"Ugh..." Ruby moaned out in pain as she collapsed on to the dark floor, gripping her stomach tightly. It suddenly became very hard to breathe, as if all the air in the surrounding area had been replaced with powdered Dust. Ruby clawed at her throat, her eyesight becoming very blurred as a wall of white light sped towards her body.
Beacon Team RWBY dorm room
9:45 AM
"She should have been up by now." Yang commented, repeatedly slamming her yellow covered head on to her wooden desk out of frustration, not really caring if it hurt or not. Like Weiss had previously done, the desk shook as her head made contact, knocking over Dust bottles and pencils. Ruby had to wake up soon, she just had to.
"Trust me Yang, no one is worried as much as I am." Weiss replied back to the brawler, who stood at the head of her own bed, watching Ruby as she slept.
"You? Worried about Ruby?" Blake asked bluntly, flipping a page in her book, not making eye contact with anyone.
"Well... Ozpin will want to see her soon and she is our leader and..." Weiss rambled on excuse after excuse regarding her worry about caring for Ruby other than what both Blake and Yang clearly understood: Weiss liked Ruby.
It was painfully obvious to Blake and Yang, and it would have been for Ruby if she wasn't so... Hyper all the time. The way that Weiss would always want to be next to Ruby even when she was too stubborn to admit it out loud. To Blake and Yang it was only a matter of time before Weiss admitted her feelings.
"Or what if when she wakes up she tries to kill us?" Weiss asked, finishing her rant of excuses that neither Yang or Blake cared enough to hear its entirety.
That statement was enough to make the rouge Faunus fold back one of the rough pages of her hard cover book and close it, placing it down on the dinner table with a small thud. "That wouldn't happen Weiss, she knows us. She cares about us. She wouldn't even think about doing anything like that."
"You saw how she looked when I grabbed her arm back at the docks, she isn't in control of that wolf-like state Blake, all of Beacon could be at risk if she were to get her hands on her scythe in that rage." Weiss bluntly said, giving the duo of black and yellow a horrifying image implanted in their brains of a blood soaked hallway and one Ruby Rose drenched in the red substance, standing over a pile of bodies of students and professors, their own bodies at the top of the cluster.
"Let's just not think negative, whatever happens, happens. We can't control it by force." Blake replied as calm as she could without giving a whimper in her voice. The image truly scared her, especially after seeing what Ruby could do in that state of mind. She had very briefly considered the same reaction of Ruby when she would wake when they were having dinner the night before, but the older teen shook the idea off. It was too crazy to possibly happen, too un-Ruby-like. The usually cheerful girl wouldn't hurt a fly unless given a good enough reason.
Then from across the room, Ruby suddenly shook extremely violently, her eyes flung open as fast as a thought. The younger teen let out the most horrible sound from the back of her dry throat, gasping for air as she gripped the side of the bed, her eyes wildly darting around the room to determine her surroundings. Was she alive? Dead? Both at once? She didn't know. The leaders ears began fluttering just as fast as her eyes, adapting to the change in location and sound of voices filling the inner ear drums. Specifically, Weiss's voice.
"Ruby! You're okay! Calm down!" Weiss nearly cried out, racing to Ruby's right side of the bed, kneeling down to her level as she continued to panic.
Ruby's eyes locked with Weiss's and seemingly refused to focus on anything but those icy blue orbs, her breathing still shallow and dry but with a small but noticeable change in its pace.
Weiss wasn't worried about anything else at the moment besides the health of their team's leader, her leader. All Weiss knew was that Blake and Yang were freaking out as well, and the heiress could have sworn that Yang was on fire with worry. Ruby looked terrible, the exact opposite of what she looked like when she was passed out. All the signs of cheerfulness seemed to have evaporated from her being. Granted she seemed to be dying, it was still un-Ruby-like overall.
Weiss stroked Ruby's right hand gently, making a "Shhhh" sound with her lips, a careful minded attempt at keeping the younger teens mind at ease in order for her to calm down.
'What's happening with you Ruby?' The heiress thought as she shifted up onto the bed next to the panicking teen. Suddenly Ruby's eyesight was filled with Weiss's unusually concerned face, a mixture of confusion and fear filling her icy blue eyes.
"Are you okay Ruby?" Weiss asked slowly, tilting her head a bit to the side.
"Weiss!" Ruby cried out, clinging herself to the older girl, her silver eyes which were previously watery now letting her tears out like a faucet, the liquid running down the sides of her face as she buried her head in Weiss's shoulder.
Weiss sat in shock, half due to the fact that Ruby was hugging her and the other half due to the reaction of Ruby. Ruby, Weiss having known her for several months, had never displayed this type of emotion. Even when Weiss attempted to avoid her or scolded the younger teen, Ruby's cheerful attitude would prevail in the end. There was none of this right now, and from what Weiss could tell, things must be worse on the inside of Ruby.
Weiss simply pulled Ruby closer, a nice gesture at best but also a delayed one. Weiss hadn't gotten attached to many people in her life, and Faunus's were a group of people that the heiress wasn't attached to in anyway, besides Blake that is. Blake had earned her trust and friendship, from the Nevermore battle in the Emerald forest to the fight at the docks with Sun a few months ago, Blake had earned it as a friend, teammate, and as a Faunus.
Ruby was a different story.
Weiss and Ruby got off on the wrong foot to begin with, which only lead to the heiress despising Ruby at first. But after a few attempts at helping Weiss, usually ending in disaster and nearly killing the duo, Weiss began to like Ruby. Then, after Ruby's appointment as team leader, Weiss began to hate the teen again. And after Ruby's "helpful" suggestions during the practice in professor Ports room... Weiss had it with Ruby. Thus leading to a very long conversation with Port, who in one simple after class talk, finally got Weiss out of the icy exterior that she had close herself in, allowing her a new look on the leader of her team. From there on out the heiress began to grow accustom to the teen, likening her in fact... Possibly love.
But a Faunus Ruby? That would take all the effort that the Schnee heiress had in her entire being to not distance herself. Yes, while she has a massive crush on the petit teen, she still hadn't ever pictured this happening. This would take time.
But Weiss had all the time in the world.
As Weiss snapped out of her thoughts, she noticed the sobs from Ruby had seemingly quieted down in to soft hiccups, still burying her head in Weiss's shoulder, causing a faint blush to dance upon the heiress's cheeks.
"Ruby... You okay?"
A nod of Ruby's red and black head and a muffled hiccup was all the older teen got in response.
"Are you going to tell us what's got you all worked up?" Weiss asked, Yang and Blake sitting next to the duo.
Ruby's head slowly rose up from the white haired girls shoulder, her silver eyes currently red from the tears. The younger girls ears fluttered around as she slowly looked at each of the girls around her, eventually coming back to Weiss's face.
"You... Y-you all don't think I'm a monster?" Ruby asked softly, nearly a whisper. Her black and red ears flattened themselves on her mound of crimson hair.
Blake and Weiss both gave a collective gasp at the teen's words, causing those ears to perk up momentarily before drooping back down.
"Why would you think that?" The duo commented, leaving Yang in the background, her voice not heard.
"Well... I just don't like it when people will treat me different..." Ruby let out before hiccupping, her tail knocking against Weiss's brown and white head board to her bed, generating a "thud" like noise which strangle matched up with the beating of her heart.
"No! You're not different because of this; you're just more special... To all of us." Weiss said gently, allowing a warm smile to break free from her worried lips.
"Yes, everything is going to be fine. Even if people treat you different, it's their fault for being so un-accepting and rude; you're special, like Weiss said." Blake added on, nodding her head in agreement with the Schnee heiress.
"Well... I wouldn't say tha-" Yang began but was cut off by Weiss knocking the brawler off the bed on to the wooden floor.
"Yang! Be the supportive sister!" Blake exclaimed in Ruby defense, not wanting to knock Ruby's emotions and self confidence back down after building it up so much.
"Hey! I was just kidding, why yall over reacting so much?!" Yang shouted from the floor, scrambling around to get up.
Ruby gave a quiet giggle before breaking out into a fully fledged laugh.
"Now there's the Ruby we know!" Blake said smiling at the younger teen.
"Yeah! Hahaha that was pretty funn- WOOF!" Ruby began and let out a bark, covering her mouth with both hands, a shade of dark crimson blush adorned her face.
Blake's right eye twitched quickly before falling back down onto the floor with Yang, not expecting that in any way.
Weiss sat with her jaw slightly open, her own eyes twitching wildly.
"Did you just bark?" The shocked heiress asked, Yang suppressing a laugh from the floor at how ridiculous this situation was.
"Um..." Ruby managed to make out from behind her hands. "I... Sorry..."
"No... It's okay." Weiss said, giving a small, but warm smile. 'It's adorable.' She thought mentally.
"Well, this worked out... Purr-fectly." Yang said, grinning as if she had just won gold at a sparing tournament.
"Awe, damn it Yang!" The trio shouted out in unison.
A/N: Sorry for the late chapter! I'll be taking a while off to write both of the new chapters for both of my stories, fix my relationship life up, and get some work done. Chapter 8 will be pretty long too, as will the next chapter of TOAFL. So… SEE YA! :3
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