The Shadow of Fire

Chapter 23: Developments

One week later

Beacon Training Arena

7:52 AM

"Swing, kick, duck, dodge!" Ulysses commanded, walking as if he were a drill Sergeant, up and down the floor as team RWBY did the motions as ordered, weapons drawn.

After Yang had found Orion's glasses and the ruins of a possible struggle, Ozpin personally requested that the team to leave the job to Gale and Warren. After all, they were two of the seven Master Hunters, they could handle it.

In the first few days after finding the glasses, Ruby's legs miraculously healed, and with that came much training, studying, and work that came with being a Huntress.

"Repeat!" Ulysses commanded, watching the girls attack invisible targets and dodge equally invisible attacks.

"Yang! Wider stance, your left side is open to attack!" He ordered, walking over to a stand of dummy training targets.

The Master Hunter easily lifted the rather heavy target, hoisting it up in one hand.

"Weiss! Disarm!" He ordered, throwing the target across the room at incredible speed.

Weiss spun in a circle and spawned a Glyph under her white and blue boots, sending her up in the air. The teen spun, slicing in the air with her rapier. As Weiss landed, the dummy flew across the air into a wall, where both of its arms landed a few feet away.

"Excellent work." Ulysses said in his thick accent, picking up another target. "Ruby! Don't cause any harm, just deflect and knock out."

The massive dummy soared across the air, right towards Ruby. The Faunus grinned and jumped up, spinning with Crescent Rose in wild arcs. As she landed, the dummy followed Weiss's dummy's path, landing on the floor. As Ruby grinned towards her work, the dummy suddenly fell into hundreds of pieces, causing the teens eye to twitch.

"No, no, no." Ulysses said in a harsh yet soothing tone, walking towards Ruby. "You did the exact opposite of what I ordered."

"But why do I need to know how to knock out and opponent? It's dumb. We should focus on beating them, not being gentle." She argued back at the man.

As Ulysses closed in on Ruby, his body seemed to grow in size, now easily eight feet tall and much more buffer, looking down at the girl.

"There's a lesson here, pup." He said in a commanding tone. "You have to know when it is time to kill, and when to simply defeat an opponent. They could have valuable information, and that would be lost if you simply killed the person. Or Grimm." He spoke as if he had decades of learning about this one topic. "There are times when a weapon should kill and times when it should not..."

Ulysses pressed a button on his twin watches, one on each arm. Both ticked a few times before morphing, much like Yang's own weapons did. The watches formed a pair of gauntlets, dark grey in color. He flicked his wrist forward, causing bear like claws to exit the gauntlets at the fingers. Ruby was amazed, simply thinking how much they seemed to look like a person's weapons that she saw in a movie called Wolverine, eyes wide as she watched. The metal claws flashed blue electricity, sparking and hissing as the metal combined with the electricity.

Ruby and co watched in amazement, seeing the man's weapons for the very first time was, as Yang would say: Shocking.

The man connected his fists together, the electric blades combining and removing themselves from his arms. The metal gauntlets merged and elongated into a 7 foot long quarter staff, electric balls of metal resting on the ends.

"Now it is an option." He added, spinning the staff in hand. "My weapons, the Mask Cleavers, can go from harming and death, to pain and disarming." He said wisely, pressing a button on a small remote.

A dummy was rocketed out of a nearby cannon, flying towards him. He turned to face the dummy and spun his staff, the electric ends sparking. He quickly brought the staff down, catching the dummy and pinning it to the floor.

"Disarmed, and can give valuable information." He said, his body condensing to its normal size, his blood red eyes under his cowboy hat glaring at the teens. "Class is over, we start up tomorrow at the same time."

And with that, team RWBY exited the room in a single file line, leaving Ulysses alone with the dummy's.

Saturn's Stronghold

8:12 AM

Orion's head was a ocean of thoughts.

He could say that he had never been knocked out prior to that fight, and as a result, he had no idea how it felt.

His mind was going through thoughts at extreme speeds, trying to figure out where he was and the last thing he did.

"Ah, you're awake." A sinister voice echoed around him, causing Orion to turn his head towards the voice.

Saturn stepped forward, exiting the shadows with his cane holding him up. "How are you today?"

Orion went to charge at the man, but found that after taking a few steps, that he was chained to the ground with pure black chains by his hands and legs. Orion tugged with all his strength, surprised as the chain held their grip on the God.

"Having trouble?" Saturn asked, grinning like a maniac. "Those chains are an artifact of your "people" from the distant past. I found it in a museum after an assassination, took it as a souvenir. Glad to see it works. Chains of Dagonus, I think was its name." He added. "You won't be leaving anytime soon."

"So why keep me here?" Orion asked, stopping his struggling. "Why not go into hiding?"

"I wouldn't want to do that, then I couldn't do any work." He said simply, pacing around the God at a safe distance. "I've noticed something about you: your blood. It has the same properties as liquid Dust, so if your blood is Dust, I can make a profit."

"Your insane." Orion said simply, a bit of bark in his tone.

"Am I?" He asked with mock laughter. "I'm perfectly sane, just pissed that you took my eye, and now I get revenge and a profit." He said happily.

Orion grumbled under his breath, a small sigh in relief that Ruby and the team were safe for the time being.

"Oh, and I'm sure that now that you are missing, your little Huntress friends will come searching for you, and I can make my Lein from my client." He said sinisterly, chuckling to himself as he walked into the darkness. "Rest up now, we start taking blood tomorrow."

Beacon Locker Room

8:45 AM

"Ugh!" Ruby shouted in anger, punching a nearby locker, her fist denting the metal.

"Ruby!" Yang called out, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at her sister. "Calm down, you're acting like a little kid."

"No Yang! I'm sick of ruining training!" Ruby shouted back as Weiss and Blake awkwardly look at the two from a safe distance.

"Should we do something?" Weiss asked Blake, looking at the two shout at each other.

"No. I've learned to simply let them argue. If things get violent, then we act." Blake replied, pulling out a book. "Trust me, I date Yang herself, I know the rule book like the back of my palm."

"Paw?" Weiss teased humorously, trying to ease the tension in the room as the sisters bickered. As Blake glared at her from her book, Weiss put up both palms in a defensive gesture. "Just joking."

"Calm. Down. Ruby." Yang said slowly, giving her sister the evil eye.

"No! I'm not going to be the part of our team that causes us to fail! As leader I can't do that!" Ruby argued back, curling up into a ball on the floor, covering her ears.

"Ruby, stop acting like a dunce, and not the adorable kind." Yang said calmly, kneeling down in front of her.

"Hey, that's my line you brute!" Weiss chimed in from the back, going un noticed by the pair of sisters.

Ruby was rocking back and forth, her emotions getting the better of her, and she seemed to be talking to herself, whispering.

"Rubes?" Yang asked, placing a soft hand on the younger girls shoulder, voice full of concern. Ruby's attitude seemed, to Yang, to have change dramatically. Ruby wasn't one to have mood swings, only happy swings, where she gets overly happy.

"Ya okay sis?"

A muffled growl answered her back, causing Yang to stand and take a quick step back. The growl seemed more animal like than anything Ruby had produced before.

"Ruby?" Yang asked gently, holding out a slow moving hand toward her sister.

Blake, next to Weiss, suddenly went tense, closing her book as fast as a thought. The girls ears, which had been released from her bows tight hold, perked up quickly, moving around frantically.

"Yang..." Blake warned, taking a short step forward towards the pair, leaving Weiss standing stationary and observing.

Once Yang's open hand reached within a foot of Ruby, the Faunus girl poked her head out a little, her silver eyes no longer full of happiness and playful curiosity, but replaced with orbs of frustration and animalistic territorial anger.

And Yang was trespassing on Ruby's territory.

Ruby immediately lashed forward, springing out at her sister. Yang jumped backwards, along with Blake and Weiss. Ruby bit the air that Yang was previously standing at, growling as her attack came without reward.

As Ruby retreated back to her ball, her mind was a battlefield. Over exaggerated explosions dotted the surface of her mind, each explosion releasing a dark thought, further bringing out her inner Faunus anger. Like Blake had previously theorized, Ruby was too young, and wasn't mature yet. This fueled her anger and frustration, and caused her to act up, more animal than human, or Faunus for that matter.

"Rubes, I only want to tal-"

"Prey!" Ruby barked back at Yang's words, flying up from her ball and charging at her team.

Blake jumped up and grasped a pipe connected to the ceiling, holding her up and at safe distance. Weiss and Yang ran around the room, Weiss spawning Glyphs behind the pair as they ran, hoping to slow Ruby down until she got tired.

The Glyphs broke like paper mâché as Ruby bolted through them, barking and growling as she rammed each one, exploding into snowflakes.

"Weiss! RUN!" Yang cried out, running as fast as possible.

Weiss ran ahead of Yang, not daring to turn and see how close Ruby was, the growls were enough to determine the distance, and she was very close.

"This is your fault you brute!" Weiss cried out as she made another turn in the locker room, making a line of Glyphs behind the pair. Which turned out to be worthless as Ruby ran through them, shattering them to pieces.

"Excellent running girls." Blake spoke from her safe spot, watching the chase. "You're really slowing her down."

"Bite me!" Weiss countered at her sarcastic comment, barely dodging Ruby as she made a turn, getting separated from Yang, who made a wrong turn.

"Seems to me that Ruby will do that for me." Blake bluntly stated, the sound of Ruby chomping behind Weiss echoing around the room.

The sound of a door opening went unnoticed by the team, a tall figure entering the room. The figure walked around, following the sounds of boots on marble flooring, hands in pockets.

Weiss ran and ran, ducking and diving as Ruby swung her hands and arms at the heiress, shouting out pleads and offers for free things as she ran for her life. A wall of mass appeared in front of her, only giving her a moment to think of how to maneuver herself.

'BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE!' Her mind screamed, her body instantly coming to a halt as she jammed her boots into the ground, sliding to a stop.

As she turned to face the direction she had been running from, her eyes were met with Ruby, almost 8 feet away. As Weiss braced herself for impact, a sharp hiss, quieter than a mouse squeak, was sent around the room.

Weiss couldn't hear it specifically, just a very very quiet sound in the background of the world, almost impossible to hear.

As the sound traveled around the room, Ruby's violent eyes suddenly turned to curiosity and confusion, replacing the blood lust that she had for a quizzical look.

Ruby's expression suddenly changed from one of curiosity, to one of hypnotic, her body seemed to relax, her eyes growing droopy. The girl stumbled over towards Weiss, taking a seat on the marble flooring next to the standing heiress.

Weiss turned to the wall of mass behind her and was greeted with a shadow, and a pair of blood red eyes.

Ulysses closed his mouth and the low sound seemed to stop for Weiss, causing her to raise an eyebrow at the Master Hunter before her.

As Yang continued to run circles around the locker room, Blake rejoined the R and W of the team, and stood to the right of Weiss, pocketing her novel.

Ruby's trance seemed to end, causing her to blink a few times and look around, confusion adoring her pale face.

"How did I get over here?" Ruby asked no one in particular, looking at Weiss afterwards. "Hey Weiss-y, what's wrong? Ya look scared." Ruby asked her girlfriend.

Weiss's breath caught in her throat, no words exiting. How could Ruby not know what just happened? More importantly, why did this just happen? This was just like at the docks... When Ruby seemed to change into an animal.

Weiss turned to Blake, who looked equally uneasy, also not speaking a word. The look in her eyes seemed to be one of sympathy towards Ruby, as if this had happened to her before.

Ulysses was the first to speak.

"You have trouble with your animal instincts." He said calmly, seemingly too calming for Weiss's liking. It was as if he knew this would happen.

Yang, in the background of the conversation, ran into a locker, falling to the floor. The rest of the team, excluding Ulysses, flagged her over as she stumbled aimlessly.

"You lack control, and you let your animalistic cravings control you." Ulysses spoke in the shadows, running his fingers along the rim of his cowboy hat. "If this isn't corrected, you will harm someone."

Ruby struggled to remember what had happened to her, bits and pieces coming together as she took in Ulysses words. As she put two and two together, her face went Weiss white.

"I... I'm so sorry..." Ruby made out, her eyes watering as she struggled to control her emotions. "I didn't mean to... I didn't mean to..."

Ulysses looked at Ruby with a small amount of sadness in his blood red eyes, as much as he could at least. After a few moments of looming over Ruby, he spoke again.

"Weiss, take Blake and Yang and go in the hall. I need to talk to Ruby." He spoke soothingly, yet like a general. "Alone."

Blake and Weiss exchanged glances before nodding simultaneously, helping the dizzy Yang as they exited, Weiss giving Ruby one last look of concern before closing the metal doors to the room.

Ulysses knelt down to Ruby's level, who at this point was silently crying. He wore a mask of calm, gently placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Ruby..." He said as gently as he could muster, his thick accent making it hard. "Look at me."

Ruby, wiping her eyes with her dress sleeve, looked up at the Master Hunter, sniffing a tad.

"Look at me, don't cry." He said simply, rubbing her shoulder. "No more tears, it's not your fault."

"I'm... I'm a monster..." Ruby sniffled, rubbing her eyes.

"You're not, and your fine. A perfect Huntress." He said gently, thinking for a moment.

"Here, will this make you feel better?"

Ruby looked up as he reached up to his head, and plucked his hat off, placing it on the floor by the pair.

Ruby's breath caught, her watery eyes looking at his head.

Upon the top of his brown hair was a pair of ears, brown bear-like ears to be exact. They looked horrible; sections on both of them seemed bit off or ripped off.

"I've been alive and fighting since before you were born. I've seen Heaven and Hell, love and pain, life and death. And I've made it past all my problems." He explained, snapping a finger over his head.

Ruby gasped.

Only the right ear moved.

Ulysses moved his hand down and knelt in utter quietness before he spoke.

"It was five years ago... I was traveling around a rather nasty part of a village to the west. I was on mission, a contract to find a lost weapon, but as I reached the target location, I reacted too late and didn't see that it was a trap..." Ulysses trailed off, looking at the floor.

"A gang of pro-human radicals surrounded me in a locked and secured building... I fought as best as I could, but... they played dirty. I was tackled, kicked, punched, stabbed, burned, shocked, and pushed to the point of death... They took my ear and hearing their for revenge, for ruining their planet... So in a moment of rage, and, I'll admit it, animalistic fury, I attacked them not as a Faunus or Human, but as a beast. After that day, I sought to control that anger inside of me. It's not all evil; it's a part of you. Even your friend Blake has this issue. It's good, in the right situation. But not for chasing your team around a locker room." He said wisely, rustling Ruby's mop of red and black hair.

Ruby sniffled once more, giggling slightly. "Okay. I'll... I'll try." She said with another sniffle. "And Ulysses?" She asked softly.

"Yes Ruby?"

"Do you hate humans? For what they did?"

"Not at all, theirs just a few bad apples."

"Oh..." Ruby said softly.

"Anything else?"

"What was that that you did to make me stop attacking?" Ruby asked, fumbling with her skirt.

"It's a thing I have, a taming call if you will. No matter the distance, I can get your attention." He said, placing his hat back over his ears and running his fingers along the hat. "Come on, let's go." He said, his red eyes piercing in the darkness of the room before he turned away.

Ruby hopped up and followed him out to her team, with a new feeling of warmth in her heart, and possibly, a feeling of new found control.