Black Sun
Chapter 12
Ruby wandered around the Bar, looking for Pyrrha. It didn't take long to find her – she had put herself in a shadowy corner in a nearby building, and was sitting while facing the wall and gently sobbing to herself. Ruby hesitated before taking a few steps towards her.
"Pyrrha…?" Ruby questioned.
Pyrrha didn't say anything, or even acknowledge Ruby's presence. Ruby's expression tightened, and she carefully approached, then sat down next to Pyrrha and rested a hand on her back.
"I'm sorry, Pyrrha," Ruby said softly.
"Why…?" Pyrrha managed to get out. "I-I mean… she almost killed me! Killed us! How could he partner with her?!"
"I don't know. But it's Jaune, Pyrrha – I'm sure he has a reason for it."
"You can't know that! What if-"
"Neither of us can know anything until we track him down and start asking him questions," Ruby insisted. "Come on, on your feet."
Ruby pulled Pyrrha up as best as she could. Pyrrha stumbled as she was yanked to her feet, but caught herself. She sniffled, then dried her tears and faced Ruby before nodding,
"...You're right," Pyrrha said quietly. "We… we should at least hear what he has to say first before doing anything."
"That's the spirit," Ruby agreed. "I'm sure that, whatever drove him towards Cinder, it was something that didn't leave him with any choice. So don't write him off yet – I'm sure we can still trust him."
"It's… it's not just that," Pyrrha admitted. "I… may have had a crush on him back at Beacon."
Ruby stared at her. "...You're just admitting that now?"
Pyrrha blinked, surprised. "You knew?"
"Pyrrha, I think everyone knew except Jaune. You weren't exactly subtle with it. He's just dense and it went over his head. Though, I have to ask – why bring this up now? Were you hoping to get with him at some point?"
Pyrrha bit her lip, then shook her head. "...I don't think so," she offered. "I mean… I didn't think I was ever going to see him again. That made me realize that it… probably wouldn't work out between us. He just doesn't feel the same, I think."
Ruby's expression softened. "That's something to bring up to him when you talk to him again, I believe. No better time than now, right?"
Pyrrha nodded. She took a deep breath, then adjusted her gear slightly.
"…Alright," she said, "let's go find him."
"Alright, so… how does this thing even work, anyway?"
Cinder rolled her eyes. "It's a handgun, Jaune. You know how it works."
"I know it's a handgun," Jaune protested. "But it's so different compared to the Makarov."
"Let me see."
Jaune passed her the gun. Cinder ejected the magazine and the chambered round, then began to turn it over in her hand, inspecting it. She fiddled with the controls a bit before nodding and handing it back to him.
"Same operating mechanism as the Makarov," she said. "Your first trigger pull is long and heavy, and the rest are short and crisp. The lever at the very back is the safety; when the hammer is back, you can carry with the safety on. Otherwise, push the big lever in front of it down to decock the gun and carry it without the safety on."
"Uh, okay," Jaune said tentatively. He looked back out into the grass, where Cinder had set some empty tin cans and glass vodka bottles up on top of some old tree stumps. He took a breath, then aimed with the gun, his finger gently pulling through the double-action trigger.
"Shotguns are different from most other weapons," Cinder told him. "Precision is less of a concern. You still need to aim, obviously, but the spread of the pellets ensures that you're more likely to hit something within a certain range with a single pull of the trigger compared to a pistol or rifle. With those, it's all about the fundamentals."
"And those would be?"
"Sight alignment and trigger control. Keep your sights lined up properly and apply proper pressure to the trigger as you pull it rearward. Don't let anything disturb your grip as you fire the weapon, or you'll miss. Now, try to hit something with it."
"Uh, alright," Jaune said. He took a breath, and then pulled the trigger. The shot went wide, missing the tin can he was aiming at entirely. He stared at the can despondently, then sighed and lowered the pistol.
"What did I do wrong?" he asked.
"You flinched at the last moment," Cinder answered. "Don't flinch, let the pistol recoil."
"What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like it means – you flinched at the last second as you shot the gun, and tried to fight the recoil by driving the weapon down. That made your shot go low and to the left. For your next shot, don't try to fight the recoil, just let the pistol kick in your hand. Keep a firm grip on it, of course, but don't try to force it down. See what happens."
Jaune nodded in understanding, then took aim at the next target with his Mark 23. He focused in on it, making sure his sights were properly aligned, and then carefully pulled the trigger, being mindful not to try and fight the recoil the way Cinder had told him. To his astonishment, the glass vodka bottle shattered. He stared at it for a moment, then a wide grin crossed his face.
"Hey, I did it!" he called. "All thanks to you, of course."
Cinder waved him off. "You needed to learn how to properly shoot at some point. We can't rely on you just having shotguns from now on."
"I don't know, I actually kinda like shotguns. They're pretty easy for me to use compared to everything else."
"Admittedly, you aren't bad with them. Hopefully we can get you a better one at some point."
"My Remington isn't cutting it?"
"No, but it wouldn't hurt to afford better gear at some point."
"You have to take care of yourself too, you know," Jaune pointed out. "You'll need better gear at some point as well."
"We'll cross that particular road when we come to it," Cinder emphasized. "For now, our focus should be on taking care of those hostile Loners before they can get the drop on us."
Jaune's grin faded. He let out a heavy, tired sigh. "...Okay. What's the plan?"
"The way I see it, they're going to come for us at some point," Cinder answered. "They know we're in the same general area as they are, and we also know they're not going to be too happy about me taking out their camp. So sooner rather than later, they're going to start hunting us." The way I see it, we can either hunt them down first, or let them come to us."
"Hm…" Jaune brought a hand up to his chin in thought. "...I can see positives and negatives for both."
"Such as?"
"Well, if we hunt them down, we'll get the element of surprise, for one. They won't be expecting it. But… that's about the only positive for it, honestly – it's just too dangerous for the two of us to do it alone. Even when you pulled me out of the camp, it took a lot of preparation, luck, and whatever else you did to fight them all off. Something tells me we won't have all three of those this time."
"You're probably right," Cinder begrudgingly admitted. "So then we're stuck letting them come to us."
"That's not all bad," Jaune explained. "We can prepare for them – we've got this entire abandoned factory to use. We can set up there and wait for them to start pushing, and then take them all out as they come flooding in."
"But there's still only two of us," Cinder pointed out.
"Right, and that's the problem. Plus, if we get cornered, we're as good as dead… but at the same time, we kinda have to put ourselves in a corner if we don't want them all to flank us or something."
"So our options are attack first and probably die or wait for them to come to us and probably die," Cinder surmised.
Jaune blinked. "...Well, when you put it that way, it sounds hopeless."
"There's two of us and Gods only know how many of them. Even with my abilities, I don't like our odds. But we don't have much of an option, now do we?" Cinder shook her head. "Alright, we're just going to have to do our best to prepare for them. It's not a great plan, but it's not nearly as suicidal as searching them out first."
"What do you have in mind?" Jaune asked.
Cinder thought for a moment, then looked back to him.
"How many grenades do we have?"
It took a few hours of preparation, but by the end of it, they'd managed to set up a few basic tripwire grenade traps inside the stairwells of the factory. Once that was done, the two of them posted up on the top floor, Cinder peeking out a window and keeping watch over the entry to the factory. Jaune, meanwhile, was slumped against a nearby wall, trying to rest, and failing miserably.
"What makes you so sure they're coming today?" he asked.
"I don't know," Cinder replied without looking back. "Maybe they won't. But we can't afford to take that chance, now can we?"
"You didn't seem to mind when you were doing those missions on your own."
"Because I had to do them, since we desperately needed the money and an Artifact. Now, we need to be cautious."
"But what if we have to leave and they haven't shown up yet?"
"Then we carefully disarm the traps or step over them," Cinder warned.
Jaune let out a grunt, then shook his head. "Honestly, this whole thing seems-"
"I've got movement."
Jaune turned towards her in surprise. "Really?"
Cinder nodded, then motioned for him to come to her. "Stay low."
Jaune dropped into a crouch and began to move over to where she was. Once he arrived, she handed him a set of binoculars, and he looked through them out to the fields around them. Sure enough, through the tall grass and the dim rays of the setting sun, he could see several military-aged men holding rifles creeping towards their position. He let out a low whistle.
"That's a lot of them…" he muttered, handing Cinder her binoculars. "What's the plan? How do you want to do this?"
"I'm going to start laying down fire," Cinder told him. "Watch the stairs. If anyone tries to push, you know what to do."
Juane nodded, then moved over to the nearest stairwell. There were two sets of them in this building; he could only hope that the Loners weren't smart enough to begin pushing both of them at once.
"Are you ready?" Cinder whispered to him.
"As I'll ever be…" Jaune said back.
"Alright. Brace yourself."
Jaune grit his teeth in preparation, making sure his ear protection was properly in place just as Cinder flicked the safety off her Kalashnikov, then stood up from behind cover and began to fire. Shell casings arced through the air as she took careful aimed, semi-automatic shots, trying to cut down as many of the Loners as she could before they were able to push.
Shots began to rain down on their position as well, tearing chunks out of the concrete walls around them. Jaune let out a small, nervous hiss as a bullet impacted just a few inches away from his head. He sank down into a lower crouch, then shouldered his weapon and continued to watch the stairwell.
Outside, he could hear the Loners talking to each other in Russian, all of them shouting something to each other that he couldn't understand. After a moment, he heard them begin to push inside, their boots resounding against the concrete floor. Jaune pulled himself back away from the stairs just in time for the first grenade tripwire to go off. The entire building shook from the explosion, and Jaune stumbled slightly before regaining his footing. He peered out from around the corner; a large amount of the stairs had been destroyed, though not enough to completely bar entry to the Loners below, and several mangled bodies were splayed out across the stairwell. Bile rose up in his throat at the sight of it, but he fought off the urge to expel the contents of his stomach and instead continued watching.
A few seconds passed, the smoke and dust clearing enough that he could get another, more unimpeded look at the area below. Several more Loners tentatively stepped inside, their rifles at the ready; Jaune didn't hesitate, and quickly cut them down with a few well-placed shots. Three Loners fell as his Remington clicked empty, and Jaune hurriedly ducked back into cover to reload.
There was another massive explosion on the other side of the building, followed by panicked, pained screaming. Jaune fumbled his reload from the shock of it, accidentally dropping several loose shells on the ground in the process. Immediately, rifle rounds began to impact against his position; one of them tore a chunk of concrete wall off, embedding pieces of cement into his face. Jaune hissed from the pain, but forced himself to finish reloading, then called to Cinder.
"Cinder, they're pushing the other stairwell!"
"I'm on it!" she called back.
Jaune was going to call to her again, but more footsteps caught his attention. A Loner came bounding up the stairs, his rifle already trained on Jaune. It was only Jaune's quick instincts that saved him, as he fired his shotgun without aiming and hit the Loner in the chest with half of the load of buckshot. The Stalker jerked from the hit, then fell over backward onto the stairs, groaning in pain as his rifle slipped from his grasp. One of the other Loners tried to grab him and pull him to safety, but Jaune cut them both down.
His 870 clicked empty again, and Jaune went to reach for more shells, but a grenade rolling close to his position stopped him. He stared at it in wide-eyed shock for just a moment, but then retreated and dove for cover around a nearby corner. The grenade went off right as he made it to safety, causing dust and loose cement to come raining down from the ceiling. Jaune sat there for a second, hyperventilating, but was quick to recover. He looked around for his shotgun, but to his dismay, it had been irreparably mangled by the grenade, and was now useless. With no other option, he drew his Mark 23 and began to move towards Cinder's position.
"Cinder, I'm pushing to you!" he called.
She didn't respond, which made him worry for a moment until he heard rifle fire on the same floor as him. With confirmation that she was still alive, Jaune moved over to her, shouting out to her once he was close enough for her to hear over the gunfire.
"I'm right behind you!" he shouted. "Keep holding that angle, I'll watch your back!"
Cinder nodded, then let off another burst with her Kalashnikov. Jaune all but pressed his back against hers, watching down the hallway he'd just come from with his pistol at the reader.
Sure enough, several Loners pushed up from the stairs on that side and began to move down the hall. Jaune hardly bothered to aim, instead laying on his HK's trigger, sending round after round of .45 ACP hollow points downrange. Two Loners were cut down instantly, and a third fell, blood spurting from his leg like a fountain. The slide on his handgun locked off, and Jaune dumped the empty magazine before hurriedly replacing it with a fresh one.
"We can't stay here!" he called to Cinder.
"We have nowhere else to go!" she shouted back.
"Then what do we do?!"
"Keep fighting! That's the only thing we can do!"
Jaune went to reply again, but a rifle round suddenly struck him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He let out a loud wheeze, and Cinder instantly rounded on him.
"Jaune!" she called. Without hesitation, she aimed her rifle over him and let off a long burst that brought down all of the other Loners in the hallway, just as Jaune picked himself up, groaning in pain.
"I'm fine…" he managed to get out. "Keep watching the stairs, I've still got your back."
Cinder nodded, then turned her attention back to the sector she'd been watching. Curiously, however, the fighting seemed to have tapered off here. At first, Jaune thought that the Loners had given up and retreated, but that ended up not being the case.
Rather, they were still fighting, but the gunshots were now all outside the building, and were not aimed at them.
"What…?" he breathed. "Cinder, what's-"
"I don't know, but I'm not about to question it," she told him. "Are you hurt? How are you on ammo?"
"Fine for both," Jaune reported. "You?"
Cinder checked her plate carrier, grimacing at what she found. "Took a few rounds center-mass; my plates are all but shredded. And I'm down to two rifle magazines, too."
Jaune's eyes narrowed. "Then let's hope that whoever the Loners have just picked a fight with, that they're friendly enough."
The moment Ruby and Pyrrha entered the Dark Valley, they were met by far-off gunfire and explosions. They both paused, their eyes widening in surprise, before Pyrrha's gaze narrowed.
"What are the odds that has something to do with Cinder?" she growled.
"We can't know that for sure," Ruby insisted. "But we should probably investigate, just in case."
"And if we find her?"
Ruby bit her lip. "...If she's with Jaune, then we should probably give her the benefit of the doubt. But if not… well, I guess we'll have to cross that particular bridge when we come to it."
Pyrrha nodded in understanding. She checked her rifle's chamber to make sure it was loaded, then brushed past Ruby and began marching towards the gunfire. Ruby watched her go for a moment, a frown crossing her face, but eventually followed after her.
As they drew closer to the sounds of combat, they slowed their pace a bit, both of them dropping into a crouch as they readied their weapons and looked around. Off in the distance, Pyrrha saw a group of Loners assaulting some kind of old building. Gunfire erupted from inside, the muzzle flashes lighting up the interior of the building through the sunset. Even from this far away, the sound was ear-piercing, purely from the sheer volume of gunfire.
"What do we do?" Ruby asked. "I can't see Jaune or Cinder…"
"She's in there," Pyrrha said, her voice low.
"How can you tell?"
Pyrrha looked to the upper level of the building, a scowl crossing her face. "Because who else would attract this kind of attention, if not her?" She shook her head.
"She's in there. I'm sure."
Ruby hesitated, then nodded. "Well… okay. So what do we want to do?"
"If she's in there, then Jaune might be in there, too. Even if he isn't, she'll know where he is. So we're going in."
"Just like that?"
"Yeah. Follow me."
Pyrrha rose to her feet, then began to creep towards the building. Ruby followed after her, the two girls drawing as close to the area as they could. The area was absolutely swarming with Loners, both alive and dead – Ruby counted six of them outside, and four more dead bodies among them; thanks to the muzzle flashes illuminating the interior of the building, she could also see several more Loners and corpses at the base of the stairs, trying to push up.
As they closed in, however, one of the Loners turned around and spotted them. His eyes widened, and he shouted something in Russian, then began to raise his rifle.
Pyrrha beat him to the punch. She shouldered her rifle and let off a burst that tore through the Loner. The man fell to the ground, dead, and in that moment, the rest of the Loners outside of the building rounded on them.
"Pyrrha, move!" Ruby shouted.
They both cut and run just as the Loners opened up on them, the two of them running for the nearest cover they could find. They wound up behind an old barracks building of some kind, rounds pinging off their cover and ricocheting all around them.
Ruby grit her teeth, her heart hammering in her chest as bullets flew all around her. She gripped her Vityaz so hard her knuckles turned white, then looked over to Pyrrha, who was in the middle of swapping magazines.
"What's the plan?!" Ruby shouted over the gunfire.
"Stay here, hunker down, and hope they don't push us or have grenades," Pyrrha answered.
"That's your plan?!"
"Do you have a better one?"
Ruby shook her head. "After this, we need to have a talk about rushing into danger… for now, keep me covered, we need to move up."
Pyrrha nodded, then poked herself out of cover enough to lay down suppressive fire. The Loners next to the building scattered as her bullets came soaring towards them, giving Ruby enough time to push out herself, her Vityaz spitting hot lead as she moved. One of her bursts of 9mm caught a Loner in the leg, and he fell to the ground; her next few shots silenced him forever.
Ruby ducked behind the next piece of cover and reloaded, then swapped roles with Pyrrha, laying down suppressive fire so she could move. Pyrrha came bounding up behind her, and they hunkered down behind the next building.
"This is taking too long," Pyrrha insisted. "They'll be dead by the time we get there."
"Slow down," Ruby demanded. "You're no use to them if you get yourself injured or killed."
"But-"
"No, Pyrrha. I understand that you want to rush in there before anything bad happens to them, but we have to take this slow. Do you get that?"
Pyrrha stared at her, but then reluctantly nodded. "...Okay. We'll do it your way."
Two of the Loners came out from behind cover, advancing upon them. Ruby put them both down just as they reached their cover; Pyrhra gave each man an extra round to the head to make sure they were down for good, and then they moved up again.
The moment they left cover, they began taking incoming fire; it was pure luck that both of them managed to make it further up without taking a round. They pressed their backs against the concrete wall of yet another building, and Ruby reloaded her weapon as Pyrrha looked out to see where their enemies were. She spotted them a short ways away, shouting to each other from behind cover. Her eyes narrowed.
She wanted to push them and end this now, but Ruby had a point – doing something dangerous like that wouldn't help anyone if she got shot for it.
"They're behind cover," Pyrrha said. "How do we want to do this?"
"Put some fire on that position," Ruby emphasized. "I'll push up on the opposite end and take them out."
Pyrrha nodded. Ruby took a breath, then sprinted out from behind cover. As she ran, Pyrrha began to shoot at the hunkered-down Loners, and was rewarded with a round of panicked shouts as rounds impacted just inches away from them.
Ruby, meanwhile, did as she'd said she would and pushed their position on the opposite side, switching her weapon to full-auto as she went. She spun out around the corner, and caught all three Loners by surprise. Her finger pressed against her submachine gun's trigger, and 9mm rounds came pouring out of the barrel, ripping through all three Loners. Two of them fell immediately, but the third lunged for her just as her weapon ran dry, riddled with bullets as he was. He tackled her and wrestled her to the ground, then drew a knife from his belt and tried to force it down into her, snarling as he did so. Ruby thrashed underneath him, desperate to keep the blade away from her with one hand while the other frantically grasped for her holstered revolver.
A gunshot split through the evening, and blood splashed against Ruby's front as the Loner slumped over, dead. Ruby blinked, trying to get the blood out of her eyes. Pyrrha came bounding over and pushed the dead man off her, then helped her to her feet. Ruby nodded appreciatively, then wiped the blood off her face with the back of a gloved hand.
"Are you okay?" Pyrrha asked.
"Fine," Ruby said. And she meant it – in the past, being covered with gore would have reduced her to a complete wreck, but now it was just par for the course. She simply reloaded her Vityaz, then motioned for Pyrrha to follow her.
"Come on," she urged. "Let's go see who we've just helped save."
With one final burst from Cinder's Kalashnikov, the final :Loner in the stairwell fell down, choking on his own blood. Jaune put him down with a single .45 caliber bullet to the brain, then lowered his handgun, a trail of smoke curling up from the end of the barrel. He heaved a heavy sigh, then wiped the sweat from his brow with a trembling hand.
"Is it over?" he asked.
"It would seem so," Cinder said. She reached for another magazine to replace the spent one in her Kalashnikov, only to find none remaining. With a grunt, she set her rifle aside, then drew her pistol. Jaune, meanwhile, decocked his Mark 23 and holstered it, desperate to have his hands doing anything else but hold a gun.
"Are you alright?" Cinder questioned.
"That's my line," Jaune muttered.
"I am fine. You, on the other hand, are clearly bothered by this."
"How could I not be…?" Jaune asked quietly. He shook his head. "It's no problem; let's just go and see who helped us."
Cinder nodded, then stood up, offering Jaune a hand. He accepted, and she pulled him to his feet. Then, they both carefully made their way down the nearby stairwell, stepping over dead Loners as they did so. The bodies were riddled with bullets and shrapnel; Jaune felt bile rise up in his throat at the mere sight of them, but forced it down.
The two of them stopped at the bottom, just before the door. Jaune looked to Cinder for confirmation, and she nodded, her hands tightening around the grip of her handgun. Jaune drew another breath, then stepped out into the open.
"Hello?" he called. "Anyone out there?"
There was a pause, and then the very last voice he'd ever expected to hear came ripping through the evening like a gunshot.
"Jaune?!"
Jaune's eyes instantly widened. "Pyrrha?!"
A red blur came sprinting out from around a nearby corner, and Jaune stared in awe as none other than Pyrrha came rushing towards him. Tears filled his eyes at the sight of her, and he abandoned all sense of self-preservation and charged at her as well. The two of them met in a big, bone-crushing hug, the impact just about driving the air from his lungs even through the body armor he was wearing. They held onto each other, both of them openly weeping with joy at having been reunited.
But then, as fast as the moment had arrived, it died.
Pyrrha suddenly let go of him and pushed him away as she raised her rifle. Jaune heard someone else clear leather, and knew immediately what had happened.
Cinder had stepped out into the open.
"Pyrrha, wait!" Jaune shouted.
"I figured you'd be here," Pyrrha growled, ignoring him. "Shall I ask what evil acts you've managed to commit since arriving here, or shall I simply infer it from the fact that you're still alive?"
"I'm still alive because Jaune deigned to assist me," Cinder retorted. "Put the rifle down, Nikos."
"Yeah, I blow a hole in your face, and then I put the rifle down," Pyrrha snarled. "Give me one good reason not to put you down like the dog that you are, right now."
"Because Jaune trusts me."
"He doesn't know who you really are."
"On the contrary. I think by now, he has a better idea than anyone else." Cinder's eyes narrowed. "Drop it. Now."
"Or what?" Pyrrha challenged. "You'll shoot me? You tried that once, it didn't work. Hopefully your aim is better than it was the first time."
"Keep testing me and you'll find out just how good my aim is."
"Enough, both of you!" Jaune called. "Put the guns down, now! We don't need to fight!"
"She destroyed Beacon, Jaune," Pyrrha emphasized. "How many people died because of her?"
"You don't understand why she did it."
Pyrrha looked over to him, a hurt expression crossing her face. "Why are you trying to cover for her? She's a monster, Jaune. She's only using you for her own ends. You know she can't undo the damage she's done."
"That's no reason not to give her a chance," Jaune insisted. "Pyrrha, I know you. You're not a cold-blooded killer. Please don't do this."
Pyrrha's hurt expression gave way to grief. She looked away, tears filling her eyes. "...Then you don't know me as well as you think."
Jaune watched, his eyes widening in horror as her finger began to curl around her rifle's trigger. Desperate, he did the one thing he could think of to try and defuse the situation.
He drew his pistol and pointed it at his own head.
Instantly, both women rounded on him, shocked expressions crossing their faces. Jaune held firm, staring them both down.
"If either of you shoots the other, I'm doing it," he threatened. "Don't think I won't."
"Jaune, this is crazy!" Pyrrha said. "You can't-"
"Stop. Put the gun down."
"Jaune-"
"You too, Cinder."
"I will drop mine when Nikos drops hers," Cinder retorted.
Jaune thumbed the hammer back on his handgun, the sharp click echoing between the buildings like a clap of thunder. "I wasn't asking. Either you both stand down now or you'll be scraping me off the walls."
A choked sob escaped out of Pyrrha's mouth, and Cinder's hand began to shake, but both girls did as they were told, and finally lowered their weapons. Jaune gave a tired sigh, then took his handgun away from his head, decocked it, and holstered it.
"Okay," he breathed. "Now, we can-"
"Jaune!"
The new voice made him freeze. "Ruby?!"
Ruby came sprinting around the corner, an overjoyed expression on her face. It died the moment she saw Cinder, and she came to a sudden and complete stop a short ways away, staring at her with surprise. Slowly, an expression of sheer malice crossed her face.
"So she is here," Ruby surmised.
"Indeed, I am," Cinder confirmed. "I suppose you are going to point a weapon at me as well, hm? Nikos already beat you to the punch."
Ruby shook her head. "...Jaune seems to trust you, so I have no reason to doubt him. I'm sure there's an explanation for all of this."
"There'd better be," Pyrrha threatened. "Jaune, what happened to you? Partnering with Cinder, shouting at your friends, pointing a gun at yourself-"
"He what?!" Ruby demanded.
Jaune winced. "I swear, I can explain-"
Ruby and Pyrrha crossed their arms. "You'd better."
Jaune opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden streak of lightning in the sky overhead cut him off. He stared at it for a moment, then shook his head.
"Let's get inside one of the buildings first," he said. "Then we can talk."
Thankfully, there were no counter-arguments. Everyone followed him as he marched into one of the nearby barracks buildings. The rain arrived not long after, coming down so thick that visibility outside dropped to near-zero. Jaune stared out the window for a moment, then let out a sigh.
"...Alright," he said. "Let's just all take a big step back for a second or two. Nobody here has to be anyone else's enemy."
Pyrrha crossed her arms. "I'll believe that when I hear your explanation."
"Same," Ruby agreed.
Jaune winced. "Yeah, I should have expected that…" He let out another sigh.
"Okay," he said. "From the beginning, then…"
There you go, the big reunion. And it happened sooner than I thought it would, TBH, but it's probably for the best - these four have been apart for way too long, and the main plot needs to start moving at this point.
Of course, it won't just be scenes of the four of them together. There will still be quieter scenes with individual characters, and what have you. After all, STALKER is as much about hectic, frantic gunfights as it is about slowing down and enjoying the scenery, maybe sitting around a campfire with a bunch of other people and enjoying the atmosphere... at least, that's how I've always pictured it. Basically, just because these four are now together, that doesn't mean there will be an end to softer moments between them all. We're just also going to be messing around with the plot some more.
But yeah, that's about where my head's at with regards to getting them all together again. I'm looking forward to going more in-depth with the story.
Before I go, a note - I'll be in London for most of September on a work trip, so updates may be sporadic or non-existent not only for this story, but all of my stories. Depends on how much time I have to write. I suspect it won't be much, unfortunately, but I'll certainly try my best with whatever time I do get. Updates for everything should resume around the very end of September/beginning of October. And, of course, feel free to reach out to me via PM if I've been silent for a while and you'd like an update of where I'm at writing-wise, I'd have no problem doing that for anyone.
Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and I'll see you next time!
Enjoy my work and want to help me out a bit? You can support me, as well as read more of my writing, over on Amazon. My second original story is available for purchase now, you can find it by going on Amazon and searching for 'Dead World' by John Haruspex. The story is available now for three bucks in ebook format (or free with Kindle Unlimited) or twelve bucks in paperback format, if you prefer physical media. (Remove the spaces)
www . amazon Dead-World-John-Haruspex / dp /B0C2RPGXVC / ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1682982861&sr=8-2
My first original story is also still available at the following link as well:
www . amazon dp/ B0BLFL72MX
