Blake awoke with a start, snapping upward and curling her fingers upon Gambol Shroud within her sleeping bag as the material around her chest and neck slipped downward. Her breathing was heavy and her forehead slick with sweat as she took panicked breaths, her eyes darting back and forth in the semidarkness. The faintest shafts of light filtered through the material of her tent, and she stared at the gently rustling flaps in an effort to calm her erratic breathing. For the third night in a row, it had been the same dream with the same figure she had seen only once before, and only in rough approximation.
For the third night in a row, she had died in her sleep, after watching Sun be struck down by Salem.
The faunus girl lifted her unoccupied hand and ran her fingers through her hair, the black strands matted and greasy. She closed her eyes and continued to breathe through her nose, her grip around Gambol Shroud tightening even more as she tried to banish the unpleasant thoughts from her mind. She shook her head before taking her scroll from her pocket and illuminating the screen to find the display reading 4:21 A.M..
"Eugh," Blake muttered to herself before throwing off what covering remained on account of her sleeping bag.
With a face of discomfort and a twist of her neck, Blake rose from within the fabrics and stood up straight. She rubbed idly at her shoulder, feeling a dull pain pulsing through it from sleeping upon the ground. The sudden scent of food caused her feline ears to perk up slightly. Her stomach growled as if to urge her forward, and she obliged the twinging feeling all too eagerly. Blake kept her weapon at the ready as she pushed her way beyond the tent flaps, only to find that the dim light had come not from the rising sun, but a nearby campfire. The sky was still dark overhead, and the shattered moon was plainly visible over the faraway mountains.
"Daisuke?" Blake asked, her voice coming out somewhat hoarse. "Why are you awake?"
The larger faunus sat upon a log, poking at the fire with a charred stick. A pot was suspended upon a metal spit over the flames, the bottom of the container glowing a gentle orange. Daisuke's mask was off for once, revealing his rather feminine features and rarely seen jawline. The man had also discarded his mesh shirt and vest, proudly displaying the tattooed swirls of smoke upon his pecs and the sleeves of flowers and mythological figures trailing down his arms.
"Bold of you to assume that I got any sleep," Daisuke said in a tired drawl. "I gave up after an hour or so of staring at the top of my tent, and came out here to wait for you."
A pang of guilt caused Blake's ears to wilt, and she gently lowered herself down onto the log opposite of Daisuke's before stabbing Gambol Shroud into the dirt and hugging her bare arms.
"I'm sorry…"
"Don't be," Daisuke reassured as he gave the embers of the fire pit a particularly harsh jab. "It's given me plenty of time to think."
Blake simply stared down into the flickering flames, shivering slightly in the frigid air of the early morning. She knew the question that she had to ask, but getting it past her lips proved to be a struggle. The thought of setting out to Atlas mostly alone shook Blake to the core, and the idea of confronting Cinnamon herself filled her with a cocktail of emotions that she didn't quite know how to process. All she knew for sure was that if the man across from her chose to stick to his original plan, the coming weeks would be some of the most unpleasant of her life.
"…what about?" Blake said slowly. "Did you… decide?"
Daisuke pushed his stick forward into the fire, letting it become consumed by flames in its entirety beneath the cooking pot.
"…she's been through so much pain. Crushed under a bootheel she had no chance of outrunning. I've known her since we were kids, Blake, and I've always supported her decisions. I've stuck by her. Held her when she needed a shoulder, had her back when she needed a spare blade. Followed her orders to the letter, partially to give her some feeling of control over her own life. But now, while she's being pressured from all sides, trying to pull one over on a being hellbent on global domination, or ruination, or whatever it is that Salem wants? She's hurting herself to try to buy us time. She's becoming her own enemy. Cin's on a course to self-destruction, and she isn't going to go down alone, either. I'm done letting her do things her way."
"So… you're going to intervene?" Blake asked, a glimmer of hope in her voice.
"…yeah," Daisuke confirmed as he pushed down on his knees and rose to his full height. "I won't sit back and watch her do this to herself, the White Fang be damned. She can be pissed at me if she wants, but it's time that I called the shots. Come on. Let's eat, and then get to patrol. The quicker we secure our section of the perimeter, the quicker we can head back to Kuo Kuana. Once Kali and the others return… we're heading out to Atlas with whoever else wants to come."
Blake followed suit and rose, pulling up Gambol Shroud from the dirt.
"You're making the right decision," Blake confirmed. "Don't let yourself wallow in regret. I made that mistake after the fall of Beacon… and I was beginning to feel that way after deciding to come back to Kuo Kuana instead of going with Sun, too. Now, though? If I hadn't come here… you wouldn't be going after her. Things tend to work out in the end, no matter how bleak they might seem. You just can't allow yourself to give in. Look at how you got the two of you out of Atlas in the first place. We will find a way to get back to Solitas, and when we do… nothing and no one is going to stop us."
Daisuke offered a slow nod.
"I'm trusting you. This is going to be a long journey..."
The military convoy rattled along beside the train tracks, the tunnel pitch black around them on all sides. Only the headlights of the transport provided a view of what lay ahead within the wide space, and the answer seemed to be nothing but more and more train track. The heavy tires of the vehicle crunched noisily against the gravel, adding to Ruby's headache. Try as she might, she couldn't quite manage to block out the noise, and she found herself becoming increasing jealous of Ren. He sat across from her in the open bed of the vehicle with his eyes closed, eerily calm as Nora slept with her head propped against his shoulder.
"…Ruby?"
Ruby blinked and snapped to attention. Oscar was looking up at her from his place sitting next to her, his eyes wide.
"What's up?" Ruby asked, her voice weary and chased by an unbidden yawn.
"Something about the air here feels… wrong," Oscar tried to explain. "It's so still, and… almost stale? It feels like there are eyes in the dark. Even Ozpin feels… different. Isn't this the kind of environment that grimm would like?"
"You'd think so," Roman chimed in from his place in the driver's seat. Ruby and Oscar both locked eyes with the older man in the rearview mirror, and they could see Sage turn his head from the passenger's seat. "But it's 100% clear, kiddos. The tunnel between Vale City and Mountain Glenn has been cleaned out and locked down for a few months. There wasn't a single grimm down here when we arrived. They're all up on the surface, trying to terraform Vale into a swamp of liquid grimm shit. Turnabout is fair play, so we've taken up residence down here."
"I still don't understand what the plan is with Mountain Glenn," Ruby admitted as she shook her head. "Professor Goodwitch said we'll understand when we see it, but… there's nothing down here. We're headed for the bottom of a sinkhole. Dark, dank tunnels and loading bays that have been abandoned. Well… other than when you were using them."
Roman let out a dark chuckle and flashed a grin, barely visible in the darkness.
"Good times, good times…"
"Good times?" Ruby questioned with an annoyed look. "You caused a ton of damage in Vale City! You ran a train into buildings and caused a red alert that had every professor and student fighting grimm in the streets!"
"But I fucked up Cinder's plan, didn't I?" Roman asked. "Unintentionally, sure, but imagine how much worse the situation at Amity would've been if that train had hit at the same time. Everything happens for a reason, Little Red. People have a way of getting where they need to go when they need to be there, even if they don't know it, yet. We've had each other's backs for longer than you realize, in a twisted way."
"That doesn't mean I like any of this," Ruby spat as she narrowed her eyes and looked down at the bay of the truck. "Everything feels so wrong."
"As much as I agree with you, he has a point."
Ruby looked over at Oscar in surprise. His voice had become much calmer, and his gaze upon Ruby was entirely neutral.
"Professor…?"
"Without Mr. Torchwick's actions a few years ago, you and I would never have met," Oscar reminded. "Had he never signed on with Cinder, you would just now be applying to join an Academy… and given the state of Beacon, it would be somewhere else. Beacon's central tower would be destroyed by Cinder, the entire school would have fallen, Vale would already have been converted to Salem's whims, and-"
"And Pyrrha would probably be alive, because other things would have changed, as well," Ren said coldly, his eyes open. "Everything you have said might be true, or it might not be. Every decision, every path, is fraught with positives and negatives. Let's not romanticize the actions of a criminal any more than necessary just to make ourselves feel better. We do not know how different things would truly be, with or without him, and the same is true with or without Ruby. All we know is that right now, we're working together. We need to make the best of it."
"A fair point," Oscar admitted. "However… I have had stranger allies, far more guilty than this one."
"…is he always this creepy?" Roman asked as he shivered.
"Yup," Sage said before cracking his neck. "Pretty much."
"Delightful. Well, we should be just about there, so this conversation can stop being so awkward…" Roman said as he leaned forward to squint into the darkness. "Think I see the gate…"
"Gate?" Ruby questioned. "What gate?"
"What, you think this place still looks like it used to?" Roman replied. "There have been some… renovations underneath Mountain Glenn. I like it more than Beacon, honestly. Down here, we don't even have a giant-ass stone dragon that could wake up at any second. It's practically a five-star hotel by comparison for that alone."
The vehicle rolled to a stop as two large, dark structures came into view, and Ruby stood up in the back of the truck to try to figure out what she was looking at. Overturned train cars had been stacked atop each other to form a wall with a gap between them just narrow enough for a vehicle to squeeze through. Armed guards stood atop the overturned trains, patrolling their lengths with flashlights affixed to their firearms. Roman waved to the men, who returned a nod and began to wave him through. Without a word, he stepped on the gas and began to guide the truck through the narrow pass and into a large, well-lit chamber.
Ruby held onto the roll cage as she took in the sights, her mouth agape at what she was seeing. Crowds of huntsmen and huntresses milled about throughout the area. What had once been an old train platform and loading bay was instead an underground market with various tents, stalls, and even some small buildings and depots scattered about as far down the chamber as she could see. Various catwalks had been erected around support pillars, bridging either side of the cavern and providing means of transport high above. Neon lights and large signs made of scrap metal dotted the walls and hung all around the chamber, while a large sinkhole in the high ceiling provided natural sunlight to illuminate most of the area.
Once again, the vehicle rolled to a stop as Roman pulled up to the side of the train platform. A small crowd began to gather around as Roman hopped out of the driver's seat, and Ruby opened the latch on the back of the truck bed. Ren nudged Nora awake, and one by one, the teens hopped down onto the gravel floor of the cavern. Ruby had barely touched the ground and started to dust off her skirt before the people in front of her began to part, and a familiar figure sauntered to the front of the crowd.
"Well, well, well," the tall, fashionable woman lilted as she tipped her designer sunglasses down the tip of her nose with an amused smirk. "The rumors were true. About time you and yours showed up."
Ruby's face lit up at the sight of her friend, and Nora and Ren were quick to mirror her expression.
"Coco!" Ruby said happily as the woman's team began to assemble behind her. "You stayed behind? What is this place? Why are we here?"
Coco simply chuckled as she secured her sunglasses in place once again and folded her arms across her chest while sticking a hip out to one side.
"Long story, for the first two. As for this place? Welcome to Styx."
Author's Note:
Who else stayed behind after the fall of Beacon? Who else survived? Who knows…
-RD