Nightclubs weren't really Weiss's scene. Her idea of a party had always been a white tie soirée—typically at the family manor—where guests were expected to behave appropriately and mind each other's personal space. Delicacies and drinks were brought around by servers, the alcohol of choice being champagne or wine. A pianist was expected to play at all times, often backed up by a harpist or maybe a full string quartet. The idea of being crammed on a dance floor—within inches of a dozen other people attempting to show off as much skin as possible while deafening music of questionable taste filled the room—was repugnant to her. She couldn't quite fathom how anybody could find an appeal in these places.
Lucky for her, Junior's club was empty—that wasn't surprising for the early afternoon on a weekday. The lights were on, music was playing on low volume, and the only person in the room was a man kneeling behind the bar. When he heard the two women approach, he stopped whatever he was doing and stood, watching them. He was a very tall man, stocky with a neatly-trimmed beard that connected with his short hair. Everything about his appearance was so generic that Weiss would probably forget his face by the end of the day.
"What can I get you?" he asked as they each took a stool across from him. He seemed slightly suspicious. Apparently, he didn't usually get patrons around this hour.
"Do you have milk?" Ruby said, acting nonchalant.
The man stared at her. "No."
"Oh," she said dejectedly.
"Two club sodas, lime in mine," Weiss said before Ruby could make any other dubious requests, growing even more nervous.
He moved along the bar and looked at Ruby. "Lime for you too?"
"Uh, sure?" Ruby replied.
He returned to them and placed two bottles on the counter, popping the caps off for them as he said, "Four hundred."
Weiss handed him five hundred lien in cash and then took a sip of her drink. Ruby grabbed hers tentatively, staring at the bottle as if it might bite her. After a few seconds, Weiss began to suspect that the girl didn't know what a club soda was.
"It's non-alcoholic," Weiss muttered.
"Oh!" said Ruby. "I mean, I knew that." She brought the bottle to her lips and swallowed a generous amount, instantly making a face. Weiss rolled her eyes.
"First time at a bar? Chose an odd time for that," the man commented.
"Is it?" said Ruby, doing an excellent job at feigning ignorance.
Weiss changed the topic. "So, do you own this place?"
"I do," said the barkeep.
"That makes you Junior then," said Ruby.
He placed his palms on the counter. He only seemed to become more skeptical of them as time went on. "That's right."
"You must have seen a lot of interesting people come through here," said Ruby.
"Like who?"
Weiss resisted the instinct to correct his grammar.
"I don't know. I was just . . . trying to make conversation." Ruby took another drink, cringing as she did so. "So . . . those bank robberies are pretty crazy, huh?"
Weiss almost couldn't help palming her own forehead. Ruby's subtlety was practically nonexistent.
A glass shattered against the floor after Junior's hand slipped, knocking it off the counter. He made no reaction to it, instead continuing to stare at the two. "Let's cut the bullshit."
"What do you mean?" Ruby said innocently.
Weiss chewed her lip, wanting nothing more than to stand and walk out the door then and there.
"If you want information, it's gonna cost you," said Junior.
Ruby hesitated. "How much?"
Two opulently dressed girls entered from a backroom and sat down on the two stools farthest from them. One wore white and blue, the other red and black. They looked like twins, young enough to still be in high school. They minded their own business, Junior showing no signs of having noticed them.
"Depends on what you want to know," he said.
"Bole Maze," Weiss said hurriedly, worried Ruby might be stupid enough to bring up Torchwick's name first. "What do you have on a man named Bole Maze?"
His gaze switched over to her. "Never heard of him."
"What about a woman?" said Ruby.
"You're going to need to be more specific than that," he said.
"She's tall, has light hair that didn't look natural," Ruby described.
He visibly tensed, and Weiss knew he knew who she was talking about. For several seconds he said nothing, Weiss's nails digging deeper into the bar. Then the man smiled and said, "I might know of her."
"Who is she?" Ruby said desperately.
Junior straightened his back and fished a pair of red-tinted sunglasses out of his pocket, putting them on. "Just wait here a second. I'll go grab what you're looking for." He turned and disappeared through a staff-only door.
"Ruby, we need to go," Weiss said urgently.
"What?" said Ruby, staring at her incredulously. "But he knows. We're so close!"
"Something's off. I don't feel good about this. He—"
Weiss cut herself off, distracted by the two girls from before. They'd stood and were now walking over. They each sat on either side of them, staring straight ahead and saying nothing.
"Hello," Weiss said nervously.
"This place is so boring in the day," said the one in white, her voice a dull drone.
"I wouldn't know," said Ruby, finally starting to show some signs of trepidation.
"Yeah," Weiss agreed. "In fact, we were just leaving."
"No, you're going to stay," said the girl in red to Weiss's left, her tone as bored-sounding as her sister's. She gently traced a circle against Weiss's arm, sending a static shock across her skin.
"Don't touch me!" Weiss exclaimed, whipping her arm back and shooting to her feet. Ruby stood with her, and together they backed away from the twins.
"Why would you leave when the excitement's just getting started?" said the one in white. She and her sister also got off their stools and positioned themselves between the two women and the door.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding," said Weiss, burying her fear and acting as confidently as she could. "Just step aside and we'll be on our way."
The twins didn't respond. Instead, creepily, they both raised an eyebrow at the same time.
"My sister's a cop," Ruby tried desperately. "If I don't come home tonight . . ."
Her voice trailed off, as arcs of electricity began to dance around the twins' arms. Paragons.
Junior re-entered the room from the same door he left through, but he wasn't alone. Half a dozen men—all identically dressed in dark suits and fedoras with ties and sunglasses that matched their boss's—poured in after him, each holding a gun.
Weiss barely felt Ruby's hand suddenly clasp onto her wrist. Her courage had failed her. She was frozen again with her back against a building, the tip of a blade pressed against her forehead. Only Ruby's fingers kept her rooted to reality, and all Weiss could think was that a bullet would be a lot quicker and more painless than a knife.
"If you don't do anything stupid," said Junior, "then neither will we. You two are going to come with us. Someone's going to want to talk—"
Weiss's ears popped as she felt a lurch in her stomach, and instantly—Weiss couldn't even begin to wonder how it had happened—both she and Ruby were losing their balance across the room by the exit.
"What? Where'd they go?" Junior shouted.
Everyone looked around in confusion for a few seconds. Just when one of the henchmen spotted the two women, who hadn't moved, something came crashing down from the rafters—a person in a high-tech suit of armor.
"It's her!" someone shouted.
"No, you idiot!" said Junior. "It's an impostor! Shoot!"
The vigilante raised their shield and sprinted across the club, drawing the fire as far away from Weiss and Ruby as possible. Most of the bullets either missed or bounced off the shield—others struck the armor to little effect. The gunshots sounded suppressed, though were still loud.
"Run!" the Protector shouted with their distorted voice.
Ruby, who'd been staring wide-eyed at her own palms, raised her head enough to watch the action. Weiss shook herself out of her shock and grabbed the girl by the shoulders.
"Let's go!" she hissed. No one was paying attention to them.
Ruby didn't seem to want to—the men had stopped firing and now the paragon twins were running to enter the fray, their arms crackling with energy—but she nodded anyway. They scrambled to their feet and burst through the door out and into the daylight.
Weiss's heart rate didn't start to slow down until they'd rounded a corner and stopped to catch their breaths, Junior's club no longer in sight. She wanted to further distance herself from it, but her feet could barely take the running she'd already done in her heels. So, disguised by the other pedestrians, they took a moment to collect themselves.
So much had just happened at once. Weiss didn't even get the chance to start processing it all before a new emergency demanded her attention.
"Weiss," Ruby said faintly. She didn't seem that worn out by the running, but something was still off about her. She swayed on the spot and had to grab onto Weiss's arm to steady herself.
"Ruby?" Weiss said, alarmed.
"I feel funny. It's . . . I don't . . ." She had a distant look in her eyes. She clenched them shut several times as if she'd stared into a bright light and was trying to blink the remnants out of her vision. Then her eyes returned to focus, and she seemed to regain herself. "I don't know what that was."
Weiss had a lot of things she wanted to say to—or yell at—Ruby, but her concern for the girl forced her to swallow them all. "Come on," she said. "We're going to my apartment. You need to sit down."
"I feel fine now."
"Let's go," Weiss said sternly.
They started walking. It was a warm day with few clouds. The people they passed all looked content and paid them no mind. What had happened—what was probably still happening—in that club may as well be in an alternate dimension, for all the outside world cared. Weiss and Ruby had gone from being almost kidnapped, or worse, to what felt like a normal day.
With a chance to think, Weiss tried to recount everything that had just occurred. But her adrenaline was still pumping so badly her memory was jumbled. Some of what she recalled was too crazy to be accurate, right?
It didn't matter; she'd sort through it later. She knew one thing for sure—something was wrong with Ruby.
They reached Weiss's apartment building in just a couple of minutes. She had many complaints about it, but was grateful that it at least had an elevator; she loathed the thought of having to climb several flights of stairs multiple times a day. It was especially useful now, as Ruby had stumbled a couple times on the way there. She insisted it was nothing, but Weiss knew better.
Weiss's apartment was a simple studio. It had a bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen/living room. The manor she'd grown up in had closets larger than the entire thing, but it was the best she could afford.
"You live in a bad neighborhood," Ruby commented while Weiss was unlocking the door.
"Shut up and sit down," Weiss ordered as she led the way into her apartment. Ruby obeyed and took a seat on the couch while Weiss filled a glass with water. She dropped a few ice cubes inside then presented it to Ruby. "Drink."
"I told you, I'm fine." Ruby accepted the glass and took a generous gulp regardless.
"You are anything but fine. What did you do back there?"
Ruby set the cup down—half a foot away from a perfectly good coaster, Weiss observed—and looked down at her hands. "I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking. I just knew we had to get out of there, and then it just happened. I don't know how."
She looked up and met Weiss's eyes. Weiss could tell she was being sincere.
Then Ruby's gaze shifted to the right, and she screwed up her face in concentration. Weiss tried to see what she was looking at but only saw wall. She looked back to Ruby, about to say something, then the girl vanished with a faint whoosh sound, immediately reappearing on Weiss's left.
"I knew it!" Ruby said, having caught the wall for support. "I knew my insomnia couldn't be my semblance! I told you!"
Weiss could only gape at her.
Ruby focused again for a few seconds, then—whoosh. She teleported once more, falling onto the couch on her reappearance. She grinned and pointed at herself with both hands. "This is my semblance! I can Blink!"
"Wha—Blink?" said Weiss.
"Yeah! Like from . . ." Ruby yawned, and her eyes glazed over for a second. "You know . . . a show."
"Ruby?" said Weiss.
The girl's eyelids slid shut, and she slumped over.
"Ruby!" Weiss rushed over to her side, panicking. She dropped to her knees and reached for Ruby's shoulders, then hesitated, not sure what to do. She saw her chest continue to move, which indicated that she was still breathing.
Ruby rolled over onto her back, then let out an unmistakable snore. She was asleep.
A/N: Credit to my beta readers: 0neWhoWanders, Bardothren, and I Write Big. They're great writers who are a huge help with making this story as good as it can be.
