Betty fumed as she walked along the dirt road, her flock following behind her as their armed members guarded their surroundings, ready to blow any Grimm dumb enough to show their faces to pieces.
Leaving town had been... a little more complicated than expected. Just a tad bit.
"What are you saying? Betty, why would you leave town from one day to the next?" The crumpy little mayor never knew when to shut up, for his own sake. "Your parents would-"
"Mah 'rents woulda sent mah off with a pat on deh back an' some extra fire fah Big Betty," she patiently explained to the manlet. "Now will ya have summone take ah look ev'ry othah week or nah?"
"Was it the Grimm? Did you need help around the farm? Did the huntsman do anyth-"
Betty blushed at the mention of Gab- the huntsman. "He did'n do nuthin' an' if'n he left me with ah bastard, it ain't none uh ya business!"
The mayor gasped. "Betty, I want you to be honest with me. Did the huntsman do anything to y-"
"Gabriel did'n do nuthin' Ah didn' make him do!" Slamming a fist against the nearest wall of the mayor's house, Betty was completely surprised by the crack spreading through it afterwards, the stable brick construction shuddering at her sudden outpouring of strength.
When she looked closely, she could see a shimmer of white along her arm, just for a moment. Remembering exactly how and when she got aura, she blushed even more.
"Bo Beep, is that-"
"YOU DON'T GET TO SAY THAT NAME!" Betty screamed. Huffing, she got up. "Ah'm gunna go an' have a look 'round Vale. Dun' care no more what ya do 'bout the farm."
And with that, she had left, collecting her flock from where she'd had her buddies wait. Of course, she couldn't exactly take two dozen sheep onto a bullhead- no captain would allow it, as she was told, and they wouldn't fit in the first place- so she would have to either wait for the next big airship to dock in their little town or walk.
Just to show 'em, Betty decided to walk. Everyone tried to stop her, but a few threatening 'Baaaa's as her sheep showed 'em what, exactly, she used all the money the farm made for shut them up just fine.
She didn't need much, herself, so she'd just kept on upgrading the sheepfleet. Sheeptillery? Whatever she called it at the time.
Anyways, here she was, making her way towards Vale. It couldn't be more than a week or two to get there, right? It was the first time she'd left her hometown, but she was sure she could manage traveling a bit.
"Stup'd mayeh an' stup'd Gabr'el," she muttered as she trudged along, hoping to find a proper road again at some point. "An' 'specially stup'd Grimm!"
Blasting the beowolf crossing their path a new one with Big Betty, Betty sighed. At least her buddies were having fun, judging by the happy sounds and eager eating of any vegetation they came across.
Aura, being some kind of manifested soul juice, from what you currently believe, can be used in many ways beyond the obvious with enough determination and practice.
It's actually something you've been wanting to look into at some point, the various fields you could apply it to both promising and intriguing. For example, aura naturally heals those that have it from scratches and smaller bruises, but can be focused to recover from deeper injuries by advanced users. No recorded cases of people regrowing lost limbs or even fingers exist, but you're fairly sure that might be because of most huntsmen never really get into this- prosthetics are advanced enough, in Remnant, to give a very decent alternative to any that survive getting their aura broken with just a few missing bits and pieces.
Of course, during the course of your research, you are interrupted by a cute girl, kind of a given that describes pretty much all occupants of the mansion that aren't really a part of you. This one in particular, though, has white hair.
"Gabriel, why are you looking up applications of dust casting?"
"Oh, I was just thinking about picking up another few tricks here and there," you answer. "I've never really done more than just throwing around raw aura, so..."
"Why did you not just ask me?" Weiss smiles at you. "Not to brag, but I am extremely proficient on the topic of dustcasting, and I certainly cannot stomach the thought of you incapable of the basics of it." Giving you a curtsy, Weiss continues smiling
"Sure, why not," you shrug as you get up. "I certainly am not about to complain about spending time with you."
Note to self, Weiss' proud blushes are the cutest so far.
"How are you this good? I cannot believe this is your first time casting dust."
Weiss seems almost indignant about it as you keep a steady gust of wind going from the dust crystal you're holding onto, one of the things you got way back when you first organized for a workshop of your own.
"What can I say, I'm good with aura, I suppose," you ponder. And really, isn't that just the truth? Best you can tell, your control over your own soul (as you suspect your inner world where you stick all the other souls you eat) is translating over to this, somehow, but you can't exactly tell Weiss you've been practicing the manipulation of your own soul through entirely unrelated means for a longer while now.
"It is still astounding how not a single accident is happening," Weiss insists, gesturing from the small mound of earth you created before freezing it over and then lightly roasting the thing.
Right now, you're essentially air-drying your self-made practice target, completing your circuit of the 'basic' types of dust.
"So with the basic down, what would you consider more advanced applications?" You ask. "I can't imagine it'd be as easy to do anything more complicated, such as those ice walls you like to raise."
Breathing out, Weiss obviously decides to cut her losses. "Very well, I suppose if you are capable of this much, we can proceed to the next lesson. Do keep in mind, I will be angry if you say this is just imagining something hard while pushing aura at dust."
"My lips are sealed, my little princess." And indeed, her haughty blushes continue to amuse you.
"I said to stop calling me that!"
Personal family time with Sarah does, of course, remain an absolute necessity of your daily (un)life. Not simply because she's amazing, wonderful, adorable or even beyond reproach in her very existence, but simply because she's Sarah, and you absolutely love spending time with her.
You make sure to tell her as much whenever the topic comes up, of course.
On one of the numerous occasions, then, that you just hang out with each other doing whatever comes to mind, it is that Sarah has one of her numerous great ideas.
"Hey Gabe, let's troll people on the CCTS."
"Brilliant idea. One second, I need to go through a few of my souls."
It doesn't take you long, all told, to gather the right kind of setup, and so, with a CCT access station on hand, you and Sarah begin to code, your sister using her power to let you simply guess most passwords you need to hack into various administrator accounts in the CCTS.
It could, in fact, be said that you are scarily good at this... but then again, most of this is just basic application, honestly, once you get into how Remnant tech works. They really just aren't set up to defend against digital attacks on what amounts to their version of a proto-internet.
General Ironwood was not having a good day. A shame, too; they had some nice weather for a change, but there was simply no way he could spend any time drinking his usual morning coffee in peace and quiet while looking over his daily itinerary right this moment.
"My name is Cock, MetalCock," he read aloud the text next to the half-naked depiction of himself, "but know me as the Iron Wood that shall pierce the heavens. Support my campaign to fuck all Grimm in existence until they overflow with coolant."
Right. This was a situation that needed solving, so he called his secretary and-
"Wait, how many people are seeing these things?"
Jacques Schnee was utterly livid. And for a change, this was not because profits were crumbling, no, it was because someone had sabotaged his work computer!
He could not tap anything without opening dozens of applications redirecting him to filthy faunus porn! His entire workflow was halted until this was dealt with!
"I, uh, sir, I am a general technician. I am entirely unqualified for doing anything about... this." Gesturing at the screen showing a cat faunus being plowed, the unpaid intern (or at least future unpaid intern, as far as Jacques was concerned) shrugged.
"Then find me someone who is! It can't be that hard to fix a basic issue like that!"
Just then, the display switched from outright pornography to yet another 'advert'. 'OnlyFauns! Race Relations of the 'special' kind.'
Jacques reconsidered getting up to smash someone's head in with one of his potted plants. There had to be enough useless leeches to be found inside the mansion...
Look on the bright side, Jacques. Look on the bright side...
"Mister... Mister Schnee!" His head of PR stormed into his office. "There is... there is faunus porn all over the servers! Every SDC company intranet access point and even the employees' scrolls are showing porn, and all our customer support has been replaced with links to this deplorable site!"
The bright, side, Jacques...
In Atlas and, to a lesser extent, Mantle below it, many citizens found themselves confronted with a cyber-attack of never-before-seen dimensions, an aggressive marketing campaign of sorts being conducted for a new scroll application containing a fairly simple video game.
In it, the protagonist, being none other than James Ironwood, headmaster of Atlas Academy and General of the forces of Atlas called MetalCock, was subjecting a neverending horde of Grimm to an energy beam fired from his crotch.
It was a fairly simple side-scroller, but surprisingly fun, played widely despite the press conference declaring the General's depiction to have been used against his knowledge and will. Similarly, many parents ensured the work would not remain on any scrolls children were likely to handle, as it contained frequent sexual innuendo and references if its opening screen was not obvious enough.
Not to mention all the links to faunus porn, of all things.
Willow Schnee drunkenly dabbed on her scroll. She'd received mail, hadn't she?
"OnlyFauns! More than faunus may come inside."
Oh. That was nice, she supposed.
Honestly, maybe it was, as Ruby would put it, 'mean' of you to goad Yang into sparring with you by insinuating she could hit you as many times as she wanted, but hey, in your defence, it totally worked.
"What's wrong? I'm right here?"
Panting, Yang glares you in the face. "Hold... still!"
Blasting her shotgun gauntlets behind herself, Yang moves with the recoil, angling her head to ram into you in a headbutt, only for you to trip her up and land a hook right in her stomach, throwing her back without really damaging her thanks to her aura.
"Fight... me... coward!"
You sadly shake your head. "Come on, Yang, not to disparage your skills, but I am very much stronger than you. I also don't throw a temper tantrum every time I activate my semblance, so I figure I have that going for me, too."
As though triggered by your words, Yang's hair turns to flames blazing behind her as she aims an uppercut at your face in her next approach. "Oh yeah?"
You answer by hitting her in the face.
It takes a good long while, but eventually you manage to turn Yang's burning (heh) desire to maul you into something productive by actually teaching her how to fight without leaving herself open all the time through, surprisingly enough, bluntly telling her every time she makes a mistake.
"Well if I suck so much, how do I do better, huh?" Is what she asks after one too many times you put her on the floor.
"Honestly, against someone too far out of your reach, as in, me? You run," you tell her. "Doesn't matter what else is going on, in a serious situation, where an actual fight would see you dead? You get out of there as fast and hard as you can. Win unwinnable fights by just not fighting."
"That's not what I mean and you know it." Having worked her way through her anger, what's left of Yang is, apparently, pouting.
"Alright, alright, for starters? You're not technically bad, and I'm seeing Tai's influence clearly enough. He did teach you well," you start off, letting Yang soak in the unexpected praise. Her surprised face is amusing, if nothing else. "Your biggest issues right now are your composure and the tactical side of things."
"Oh great, this is already sounding like a lecture from dad," the blonde sighs.
"Obviously he's got a point then," you quip at her. "Now what I mean by that isn't that you should control your emotions at all times or anything. Wouldn't work, anyways. What I'm suggesting you do is try and direct your emotions. It's alright to be angry, but that anger only wins you fights when you use it right."
Yang sniffs. "It works just fine as is, thank you."
"It works until it doesn't." You just shrug at her. "Am I wrong to assume using your semblance works like that? You release everything you've bottled up at once, using it to empower yourself?"
She pouts.
"Just saying, you have to really do that strategically. And probably not get so sloppy when you do."
"Oh geez, now you're literally repeating dad's points," Yang says with rolling eyes.
"As I said, just means he's obviously got a point. As does anyone agreeing with me. Now get up and face me already, you've been sleeping in the dirt long enough."
And it seems, against her own will, Yang is actually calming down a bit in your presence. More measured approaches, less wild dashing, even if her style still has her do plenty of those. And wonder of wonders, she actually does seem to stop growling and squinting suspiciously at you.
"Gabriel? Thank you. You're still a jackass, though."
"The greatest jackass ever."
Sarah probably didn't mean for this to happen when she put the idea into your head, but looking at her now, you doubt anyone could see a hint of hesitance or regret.
"And now my Atlesian airfleet invades, utterly crushing you through technological and numerical superiority!" Sarah, having homed in on the 'strongest faction', according to her, has been building up for this moment the whole game, acting to utterly punish any attempts to stop her from building up.
You, having been playing as Vale this whole time, naturally proceeded to do just that, Ren and Nora as Mistral and Vacuo respectively taking their opportunities to strengthen themselves but with Nora ultimately falling to a surprise attack by your sister, leaving only the two of Ren and you to oppose her, it was already too late, with Ren's intentions an open book to her.
Suffice to say, Sarah wins.
"My honor demands revenge for this loss." Ren, having gone very still and intense even for his usual self, states his desire with absolute certainty.
"Oh great," Nora sighs dramatically, "now he's gone like this nothing can stop him. Wanna shuffle kingdoms this time?"
"Sure, why not," you agree easily. "Better than letting Sarah keep Atlas, anyways."
Sarah sniffs pretentiously. "Not my fault all of you failed to stop me of making use of Atlas' numerous advantages."
"My tuuuurn! Dreadqueen Nora Of The Northern Storms will squash you measly mortals!"
"Guess I'll be Vacuo this turn, then. Everyone loves desert storms, right?" Or at least they shall learn to love them.
"I shall be taking Vale."
"And Mistral for me," Sarah concludes. "Did I mention how amazing starting as Mistral is? All the starting bonuses and rich natural resources? Prepare to git gud or get wrecked."
Oh great, now both Ren and Sarah are being competitive about this. "We're going to be at this for a while," you stage whisper to Nora.
"Come on, Pyrrha, it's not like anyone but us can see up here," you smile at the (privately) shy redhead. "Besides, we both know how much you like letting loose a bit."
"I'm not sure... and why did you say we shouldn't invite Weiss?" She asks, furtively glancing around. You do have a good explanation for that, actually!
"Weiss is pouting right now over something me and Sarah did," you tell Pyrrha. "Nothing big, but I think she's trying to overplay how funny she finds it by being stricter. She'll get over over."
"Right..." Another look around, another- you know what, fuck it.
"Look, it'll be fine, Pyrrha. Here, I'll even go first." Dropping your swimming trunks, you step out of them, Pyrrha huffing and turning away.
"Very well, but I am not putting on a show." Sitting down at the pool's edge, Pyrrha begins to take off her own bikini, just occasionally glancing in your direction.
"Would you like me to join you, then? It isn't a show when nobody's watching, after all." Thus, you saunter over to the pool, nonchalantly dropping your feet in in right next to Pyrrha and slinging an arm over her back, idly playing with the strings keeping her top on.
"I would very much like for you to join me, Gabriel," she smiles at you. "I do quite like being with you like this, it is indeed quite... freeing."
"And you wouldn't catch me claiming I didn't enjoy it, either," you smirk at Pyrrha before giving her cheek a kiss, the two of you having grown quite comfortable with each other's naked bodies by now. "In completely unrelated news, how are you feeling? Has the minion I got for you been doing well?"
"I am good, thank you Gabriel. And yes, the... maid? Has been useful. Though I still insist you shouldn't have." This again?
"She's just a way I can express my love, don't worry," you assure Pyrrha, a light blush coming to dust her cheeks. The water isn't too warm, is it? "Besides, the gem trick is quite handy, isn't it? She's mostly meant to make your day-to-day easier and doubling up as a training aid."
"I understand. I am just always worried people put me on a pedestal, you see? Think nothing of it, please," she beseeches you.
"Always. This and a million other things." She closes her eyes when you go in for the kiss on her lips, freely surrendering her mouth to you.
Pyrrha, you have found, tastes a bit like raspberry whenever you kiss her. Hidden under her obvious attraction and budding interest as much, much more than a romantic partner, anyways, both of which you have also started being able to sniff out or directly taste.
Somehow. Vampire abilities, man.
Either way, she also tends to respond very, very positively to you squeezing her ass... perhaps because it's a reminder of her favorite thing to do behind closed doors, or hidden from observers, anyways, no matter how much she denies it with the most adorable blush.
Breaking your kiss, Pyrrha wiggles a little under your attentions. "Here?"
"Where else?" Because you seriously doubt she could stand to go anywhere else. "We can just do it under the water, nobody would see."
And indeed, Pyrrha can't resist, and so before long you have an adorable girl that deserves so much better than being admired from afar eagerly riding your lap, happy to take you in her ass as many times as she can before tiring.
Which, honestly, is a lot. Girl has trained everything, endurance included. You just regard her fondly, cuddling her from behind to let her know how much you care. Because for all that you completely disregard people's lives, opinions and anything else in general, you are perfectly capable of caring for particular people, thank you very much.
"I simply cannot believe you two." Poor little Weiss has just been in a constant huff ever since you did the whole IronCock and massive PR campaign for positive faunus relationships thing, so perhaps it shouldn't surprise you that she continues to try and 'supervise' you and Sarah to keep you from repeating the incident.
Preposterous, of course. As if supervision would stop you from being a tad bit mischievous every now and then.
"What? It's not like we're doing anything out of the usual." And indeed, naked cuddling is perfectly normal around people you trust. When else would you do it?
"Are you really just either being perverse or uprooting the world's largest security system whenever you are together for any length of time?" Blushing, Weiss huffs and puffs as she averts her eyes from your and Sarah's form, your adorable little sister languidly stretching on your lap as you lounge in the personal harem chamber you turned your room into.
"How are we perverted over this when you did way more with my brother?" A sly smile on her face, Sarah gives Weiss a saucy look. "Not that I can blame either of you, hmm?"
Leaning back against you and turning her head to receive her Gabriel-mandated makeout, she simply waited for Weiss to dig her own grave. "You are siblings! This is highly improper!"
"The only improper thing in here is the amount of clothes you're wearing," Sarah argues, reclining as you massage her smooth skin all over her body.
"You certainly could stand to strip down and join us," you agree, smiling your best seductive smile. "Who knows, if we weren't so distracted, we may just decide to get on the CCTS together again, and who knows what'll happen then..."
"Oh don't you dare!" Weiss obviously has opinions on this. "No matter how immensely amusing it was, it was still cyber-terrorism!"
"All the more reason to keep us distracted." Sarah is spreading her legs as you talk, giving Weiss a good view on what, exactly, is happening as you slowly enter your sister, your face buried in the crook of her neck and kissing it all over with as much tenderness as you can muster (which is a lot).
"Oh, you are simply incorrigible." In a pleasant turn of events, it really doesn't take all that long for Weiss to get the hint and join the two of you on your bed, disrobing as she goes.
It goes unsaid, but everyone knows who really is the most incorrigible among you, the obvious link to royalty being perverts and Weiss clearly being your little princess clear.
Nora's daily schedule can be a bit of a hit-and-miss, honestly, varying from day to day and from day to night. She's nearly as bad as yourself, honestly, erratically going from training in any of the various areas inside and around the mansion to seeking out people to interact with to just going out and eating people.
You actually had to ask about that last one to be sure, but yeah, as it turns out, the occasional additional bodies inside your basement you've been wondering about are actually from Nora's nightly excursions. Not that you're complaining, of course; you aren't about to dictate what Nora can or can't do.
That, plus the additional bodies are actually really useful for your necromantic pursuits.
Still, the one occasion you can be sure to meet Nora in are the meals all the human members of your household (sans Okita, of course, she's being Okita) attend regularly. Whether she's helping to cook herself, just being there for the kids (including Ruby and Yang on the days they are there) or just keeping an eye on everything, Nora's presence is assured.
Hence this is when you meet up with her, intending to have a short little talk... that quickly balloons out into more, surprisingly.
"Gabriel, are you seriously telling me your ideas about how to bring up your kids as mentioned previously literally were your actual plans?"
"Well, of course," you shrug. "Not like I was ever not going to spoil our kids rotten as hard as I could. I am just mentioning that I am open to other potential approaches to childrearing."
Nora sighs. "Okay, let's just go through everything you know and think you know about how raising kids is supposed to go and work our way through that."
Joke's on her, everything you took away from your own childhood was to always do the exact opposite of everything your parents ever did. Can't take that long, can it?
Fun fact, it can. Turns out Nora actually does have a lot of opinions about child education; maybe learning how her first son turned out caused her to really deep-delve into the whole topic in an attempt to be the best mother she could be to any future kids she had?
Either way, time to settle in about a lecture on why hovering over your kids 24/7 is counter-productive past a certain age, you guess?
"WHEEEEEE!"
It's a relatively nice day out today, if you're any judge. The skies are clear, with just a few clouds to be seen around, the sun slowly rising beyond the horizon.
"EEEEHEHEHE!"
Ren, peacefully reading a hardcover book to the side as he leans against a large tree, sitting in the lotus position, doesn't seem to feel any particular need to look up at what you're doing. Not that you expected otherwise, having fully expected him to take this as his Nora downtime.
"I JUST TOUCHED A CLOUUUD!"
Every time Nora comes down, you catch one of her feet with both hands, not so much throwing her straight upwards as you are catapulting her, using every bit of vampiric strength, enhancing tonics and aura empowerment you are capable of to get her as high as possible.
"I'M QUEEN OF THE SKIIIES! I'M QUEEN OF THE SKIIIES!"
Acting as a trampoline isn't the worst thing you could be doing with your impromptu adoptive daughter, and with Ren present, this is downright an entire family outing, of sorts. Too bad you didn't think to bring some food to make it a proper picnic while you were at it, though.
"I CAN LOOK DOWN ON THE CLOUUDS!
Nora herself is, of course, using her upgraded hammer to propel herself further with every press of the trigger, your expansive stores of freely available cash easily ensuring she won't run out of reactive energy propellant anytime soon.
"It's not much longer before Beacon," Ren eventually says out of the blue, continuing to look at his book. "I think... I am going to miss this."
Smirking, you shrug, getting into position for Nora's next pass. "What, that sad you won't be able to just leave Nora to someone else for a bit every now and then?"
"I HIT A GRIMM BIRDIE ON THE WAY DOWN AND IT WENT POOF!"
When she's on her way again, Ren gives you a thin smile. "A little."
"Well, don't worry, you can always come visit after school, if I get it right. Or just sneak out of school if you really need a little time off."
With his smile still in place, Ren just shakes his head, already back at it.
"IS THAT A SMILE, REEEN?"
"Just your imagination, Nora!" He calls after her as she makes for the skies once again.
You remember the time when Ruby first met you, the whole thing with Yang whom you were considering just kidnapping and permanently keeping somewhere at the time and her, frankly, adorable efforts to keep you from 'locking her up in jail'.
This is relevant because she is, once again, posing for you in highly questionable states of attire as you pretend to actually need to do more than see her once to be able to perfectly reproduce the sight within the confines of your mind, painting pictures of her as seen from several angles.
The big difference being, this time Ruby came prepared. In fact, according to her, she actually kept thinking of things she wanted to try out for this, and so she brought along several outfits... or 'outfits', for the time you arranged.
First of those Ruby wanted to try out? Binding her hair back to look 'like her mom', dressed only in red lingerie.
"Do you like it? I spent a lot of time picking something out."
You're tempted to go ahead and knead Ruby's ass as thoroughly as you can, but alas, you've resigned yourself to just watching for the time being. "I love it, Ruby. You look very, very sexy like this."
"I'm glad." And despite her attempts to act all mature and composed, Ruby is blushing just the slightest bit, slowly waving her ass in your direction.
You swear, if you weren't determined to take things slowly with her...
Still, eventually, you get through all the angles you want to work out, quite enjoying the sight of both her butt thrust out for you and the breasts hanging in her red bra, and it is time for Ruby to change.
Now sporting a bigger blush, for some reason. "J-just a moment, I just want to put my cloak back on, if that's okay?"
"Of course, Ruby, whatever you need to feel comfortable."
The state of (un)dress Ruby comes back into the room in is... quite amazing, actually. You're not quite sure, but you think you may have a thing for women wearing just enough clothes to show off how naked they are, as Ruby is amply demonstrating.
Granted, it's mostly so you can tear them off or watch them undress the last bits, but hey, those are very fun activities for the whole family in the first place.
"My cloak calms me down a bit," is all Ruby has to say as she shows herself off for you.
"As does Crescent Rose, huh?" You jokingly ask, giving Ruby a hungry smirk she seems to be soaking up like a dry sponge would water.
"No, Crescent Rose is just there to make me look sexier." Hiding one of her eyes behind her hair as that very, very fine blush that never quite went away dusts her cheeks, she poses, balancing herself on the back of her scythe's blade and pulling her legs up. "Does she work?"
"I wanted to say this earlier, but I could go over there and bury my face in your butt, Ruby. Or maybe I should just pin you down and properly grope every inch of your body, explore every nook and cranny of Ruby Rose... Would you like that?" You aren't lying, either. Despite the very, amusingly, forthrightly awkward flirting, you're of half a mind to just grab Ruby, carry her off into your harem chamber and never let her leave.
A sentiment she can obviously feel in your gaze, judging by the goosebumps spreading over her skin. "I think... I think I should go take off my last outfit," Ruby says, folding her sniperscythe up into its more carryable form as she lands back on the ground, immediately leaving it leaning against the wall as she leaves through the door into the simple, featureless bedroom you're using for these purposes. "Are you coming?"
And with a last sly smile, Ruby turns into a whirlwind of rose petals, swooping through as you follow at a more sedate pace, consciously blocking the way out as you come in.
Ruby, shyly looking over towards you, is in the 'middle' of stripping down.
"Ooh," she coyly murmurs, "whatever shall you do, now that I am this vulnerable...?"
Ruby continued to look at Gabriel for a long moment, the man's look at her dark and hungry in a way she couldn't help but have her insides flutter from. She had been trying to keep herself from showing everything despite being this naked to see if-
Almost before she could blink, Gabriel was in front of her, shedding his clothes like water without ever taking his eyes off of her.
Ruby blushed at how much she was letting him see, but that was alright. Besides, she was soon blushing for another reason entirely; Gabriel was very, very fit, and as he crawled onto the bed and pushed her down in the process, his mouth came to cover hers, surprisingly soft and tender lips pinning hers beneath them.
She could've stayed like that forever, but eventually, Gabriel still let up, causing her eyes to wander down his muscular chest. "Hehehe... Is someone eager to see me?"
And indeed, beyond the smirking face and strong muscles lining his body, Ruby could see something big hanging down. "You wouldn't believe how eager," Gabriel murmured at her, fixating her eyes with his own again. "I've been waiting for this for far, far too long."
Held in place under his strong arms, all Ruby did was giggle a little at just how funny this was. "I'm glad. I was worried you didn't want me."
"Perish the thought," Gabriel smirked. "I just didn't want to push you into anything. But if you're old enough to go to Beacon, you're old enough for this."
What he meant was immediately obvious by the hard, hot rod touching Ruby downstairs, the ease with which it slid along her entrance testament to just how long and thick it was. Ruby could feel the weird grin forming on her face, but somehow she couldn't stop it. "Well, 'old enough girl' is telling you to stop stalling already and-"
She didn't get any further as Gabriel angled himself just so to let him start to push into Ruby, her insides spread apart by his manhood. "Oh. Oh!"
"It's been described like that before," came the lazily smug comment from above her as she searched for and found contact with Gabriel, clinging to his broad back with both arms. Sensing what she wanted, he once more dipped down, passionately making out with her, Ruby feeling deliciously small and vulnerable under him.
She loved this feeling. Of the big, strong man in front of her doing everything in his power to make her feel safe and loved, even if she didn't need the former, hehe~!
Deep inside her, Gabriel filled her out completely, making her gasp into his mouth at the feeling. So this was what sex was like, huh?
Except no, it wasn't, as the steady rhythm of thrusting Gabriel then established showed. Receiving the pleasure of having the man she (thought she) loved making sweet, sweet love to her, it didn't take long for Ruby to come, the sensation a little like when she played with herself in the shower, but much, much better, leaving her breathless and taking all strength from her limbs for a long moment.
Gabriel slowed down for her... but just for a moment. He kept going just like that for a while longer, steadily making her orgasm again and again. "Gabriel? Gabriel, I think I am doing the thing too much."
A laugh in his eyes and his voice, much more evident than on his face, Gabriel leaned over her. "Oh? What thing?"
Ruby whined. "You know, I mean, orgasming? I think I am having too many."
"Never such a thing as too many orgasms," Gabriel chided her.
"But you didn't even do it once!"
"Oh? Do you want me to? Do you want me to come inside you?" Ruby would normally pout and bat away the hand stroking her head, but now was not the time.
"Yes. No? I don't know!" Gabriel just laughed in response.
"Guess I'll just have to do my best, then." Slinging his arms under her much slimmer back, Gabriel proceeded to lift her up, Ruby's own embrace clinging tight onto him, the two of them kissed some more, his tongue tasting pretty nice for some reason. "Hey, Ruby, do you think you can use your semblance with me inside you? To do stuff like turn around while I'm still inside, I mean."
The question made her stop for a moment and really think, sweaty and exhausted as she was getting. "I'm... not sure? I've never tried anything like this."
That meant there was only one way to find out!
A quick storm of movement later, Ruby realizing that she could, indeed, use her semblance this way, she only belatedly realized Gabriel was now holding onto her waist from behind, Ruby's composure soon buried under rapid movement as Gabriel controlled the pace, speeding it up steadily and rapidly.
"Hah! Are, hah, you sure this, hah, is..."
"Don't worry," Gabriel interrupted, Ruby's next orgasm washing over her, "we're just having sex, exactly like you wanted."
It wasn't long before he was moving at breakneck speeds, absolutely driving Ruby wild as she flailed and bucked in sheer ecstasy, their wild coupling only stopping when Gabriel pushed deep inside her a few last times, the hot, pulsing liquid letting Ruby know she'd done a good job, just as her nerves flared and pushed one last, extended orgasm onto her.
"Sooo goooood..."
Except, as she slowly came down from it, she soon realized something was wrong. "Shouldn't that be going down now?"
For indeed, Gabriel was still long and hard inside her. "Silly little Ruby," he murmured at her, grasping for her titties and seeking out the back of her neck to nuzzle it. "I can go for a lot, lot longer. People have called me insatiable in the past... or incorrigible."
Ruby could feel the smile forming against her neck. "So I guess we'll just have to keep going for as long as we like."
Ruby took a while, but eventually, she decided this was a good thing. Yeah, Gabriel was her boyfriend, and she'd chosen well.
The rapidfire orgasms could attest to that.
When Yang had come back to the mansion after her short shopping spree- she'd needed a new plane for Bumblebee, to keep her bike covered in comfort while she was at Beacon, and just spent a bit looking at clothes before returning, after all- the last thing she had been expecting to see was Ruby not posing for Gabriel in scandalous clothing. Her sister may have been thinking she was being subtle, but she really, really wasn't.
So, guided to the little detached part of the 'atelier' Gabriel was using (it was really more just a big blank room he was dumping stuff he was working on inside), Yang took a quick look around the smaller space, soon realizing from the finished paintings that...
That Ruby had been posing in the nude except for her cloak at some point. Dammit, Rubes...
It took her a while to recover from the need to facepalm she was indulging as much as she could.
Still, eventually, she moved on, doing her best not to look at any of the paintings scattered throughout the room. Now where could...
Listening out, it took Yang a little, but she soon managed to pick out the sound of voices from nearby. Say about this place whatever you wanted (and she wanted to say a lot about it), the soundproofing Gabriel got on it was really good.
Approaching one of the doors leading out of Gabriel's smaller side-studio, Yang opened it up, coming inside... or she would have, if she didn't see what was going on inside and froze.
"But if you're old enough to go to Beacon, you're old enough for this."
"Well, 'old enough girl' is telling you to stop stalling already and-"
Ruby, and Gabriel. Having sex. Worse, her little sister soliciting the guy for sex, so she couldn't even storm inside and smack him upside the head before calling dad and uncle Qrow to come tear this whole place down from the ground up.
What was she supposed to do now, just... go elsewhere? Close the door again and knock? Wait for them to be done? Talk about awkward. 'Hey sis, had fun? Made sure to use protection?'
As she was peeking inside, though, she soon realized one thing. Two things, rather. One, Ruby was really, really eager for this. She was the one that kept pushing for more, even if Gabriel happily obliged. Two, hot damn, Gabriel was really going at her. He was built big down there, and he wasn't stopping for even a second, even as she watched him think of a new use for Ruby's semblance for the bedroom and come inside her.
Brothers, she really was doing this, wasn't she?
Watching on, Gabriel was just completely insatiable, continuing to plow Ruby like there was no tomorrow, again and again and again all over the room, on the bed, against the walls, and if there was any more furniture, Yang was sure they'd have defiled that, too.
Eventually, the one that gave up first was Ruby, Yang's sister just growing unresponsive and closing her silver eyes. Gabriel, in response, immediately stopped what he was doing, taking a quick look around (Yang hid behind the door) before carefully putting Ruby to bed where he was railing her just moments prior.
Shit shit shit, time to pretend she was just- The door opened, Gabriel casually putting on his shirt. How had he put on the rest of his clothes so fast?
Also, obligatory yum.
"Hey Yang," he called out without a care in the world, "how you doing?"
Errr... "I'm doing fine, thanks. So, uh..."
Yang had no idea how to broach this topic, but Gabriel cut her off before she could stammer her way into it. "So, it's just a couple days until Beacon. You feeling ready for that, champ?"
"Ugh, don't call me that, makes you sound like my dad." And that was the last comparison she wanted to do right now. "It's just Beacon, I've attended Signal for long enough to know what to expect. It's gonna be fiiine."
"Great to hear that," Gabriel nodded, now sloppily dressed as opposed to showing his abs and pecs everywhere. "I promised your dad I'd keep an eye out for you and your sister and all, you know."
"I'm sure you did," Yang muttered, Gabriel's smirk causing her to quickly backpedal. "So, uh, what'll you be doing when we're off to Beacon? Any more big events planned?"
"Oh, just some minor stuff for the time being," Gabriel shrugged. "You know, doing some smaller jobs on the side, maybe write a book or something. Oh, or do some huntsman work."
"Huh?" Truly, Yang's eloquence knew no bounds.
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Your dad talked to a few people after we sparred for a bit, things happened and now I'm a huntsman. Here, I even have the license and everything." Pulling it out of a pocket, Gabriel showed her what looked a lot like an actual huntsman license.
"HUUUH?"
They kept talking for a while, Gabriel telling her about a few of the missions he'd been on and things he'd been doing around Vale (Yang had had no idea he was volunteering for a pro-faunus movement), talking about this and that.
Yang actually nearly forgot the reason for her earlier surprise and awkwardness... until, that was, the door she'd been peeking through opened. "Hey Yang, what're you doing here already?"
Turning around in surprise, Yang completely forgot to watch her footing, bumping into a canvas-holder and remembering just how damn expensive literally anything Gabriel made was. Hurriedly trying to avoid smashing millions of lien in artwork, she flailed around, nearly completely falling over if it wasn't for Gabriel... who was trying to catch her, but she reacted to the movement by reflexively jumping towards him.
The end result was a strong hand she could feel (admittedly probably also reflexively) massaging her bust, Yang involuntarily pushing her head against Gabriel's own chest.
Ruby's reaction was both weird, considering the circumstances, and infuriating.
"I DON'T WANT TO GET THAT LOOK FROM YOU, OF ALL PEOPLE, RUBES!"
"Mhnmhnm."
Touring all over Vale in the search of the one magical place where the very best sweet baked goods can be found does, surprisingly enough, not take as long as you would have expected; as it turns out, most of those places tend to be clustered around the shopping district and the main streets of Vale, only relatively few actually situated in or near residential districts.
The reasons for this seemingly counter-intuitive trend can be found in the simple fact that you aren't accounting for actual bakeries in those areas selling mostly bread and similar foodstuff, as while some of them do also handmake sweets, this is far from the actual rule, and the likelihood of any of them being so immensely good as to satisfy Sarah's palate sufficiently low you felt comfortable skipping out on them. Incidentally also cutting down on travel times immensely.
"Nomgombh."
Naturally, as you personally walked Sarah into and out of every establishment that fit your bill, she insisted on sitting on your lap each and every time, though it isn't like you didn't get your share of the sweets you ordered, carefully shared between you, so it's all good.
Though Sarah still kept licking both her own and your fingers clean every time. One of those little things you never got her to stop ever since she was a kid.
"Nomnomnomnomnom."
Cookies of all shapes and sizes, filled dumplings, waffles and the odd pancake; nothing is safe from Sarah's sweet tooth. You think she was restraining herself from things like this back when she was alive just to keep her waistline under control, but nowadays, she just eats sweets of all kinds to any and every occasion.
Not that you're complaining, mind you. As your wonderful and adorable little sister, Sarah naturally got many of her positive qualities from you, including your own preference for sweets.
"More, please!"
Which makes it all the more vexing when she refuses to be objective in judging sweets for you to eat later. "Come on, Sarah, remember why we're doing this."
"Nope, your cookies are the best," she insists, humming happily as you give her the next bowl of checkered cookies from your newest batch.
"Really, I'm decent, but hardly at a professional level," you protest in turn. "A bunch of the stuff we ate earlier is way better than these."
"Nuh-uh, all of those cookies were made by people that wanted to make good food. These were made by you. They're special."
Shaking your head, you turn back towards the oven, getting back to kneading the dough for the next batch. At least you'll have enough for everyone later? It's not like you couldn't just have your maids do this, or just have sweets fairies summon better sweets out of thin air.
Eh, Sarah's happy, that's all that counts.
The area near Beacon Academy, as far as you can be 'near' something that lies a good way away from the rest of the city, is technically part of the residential district, but being this close to the commercial district, the difference is fleeting in the first place.
Meaning, it isn't too surprising a bunch of shops popped up to cater to any students taking one of the ferries running along the river connecting Beacon's campus to the rest of Vale. That don't take a bullhead to get anywhere else to start with, that is.
Beacon's transportation is fairly well-integrated with the rest of the city, for just how annoying its location is.
Anyways, back on topic, there's a decent amount of stores selling everything students might need; books, office supplies, uniforms, repairs of uniforms and customized reinforced clothing, weapon shops of all types and sizes, specialized custom dust ammunition to account for any 'special' needs of the completely individualized weapons integrating guns more often than not...
There's a lot to go through, okay? And most of this stuff neither Ren nor Nora need, given you took care of it way in advance. In-house more often than not. Still, it's not like you're short on cash or anything, so you go ahead and get both of them a second set of uniforms, some extra books just in case Nora loses any of hers, the works.
Even Little Nora agreed it was probably a good idea.
Over the course of your little shopping trip, you naturally pass by quite a lot of people, whether simple passerby, employees moving back and forth or Beacon students, present and future, getting some last-minute shopping done.
Most of these just do their thing, as might be expected of people living their lives and all, even if people tend to stare at your little group for some reason as you move from one shop to another. Still, the one reaction that's the most poignant is that of the faunus girl sitting in one of the little cafes dotting the area, reading a book with a pair of shopping bags sitting by her chair.
Specifically, she was, but as soon as she sees your family coming by, she simply... raises her book, blocking out her face for you. And keeps moving it along as you keep on walking, making as sure as she can that you don't see her face.
Not too surprising, given this girl is the one you know under the name of Blake Belladonna, according to the forms she filled out to participate in the 'photo shoot' you set up a few days ago. Looks like she's using the salary you paid out to all of them to full effect, judging by what's printed on those bags of hers- lots of dust she's stocking up on.
"Mn. Here."
Having Okita suddenly track you down (by asking split-off parts of yourself where you are, admittedly) and hold her scroll in your face isn't necessarily what you would call a smooth change of topic, but you'll take what you can get.
"'Do things for your friends every now and then, not because you owe them to, but just because it's a nice thing to do.' Okita, what is this?" You ask, your confusion a tad more than just light.
"Guide to Friendship," the girl in question explains, making you blink as you take in more of what's going on on her scroll.
"So you want to do something nice for someone?" You ask to clarify.
"Mh. Weiss."
So... she's asking you to help her do something nice for Weiss... you think?
Patting Okita's head a little, the silent girl closing her eyes and getting on her toes to stretch towards you, you repress the urge to shrug.
"I think you should just spend time with Weiss, Okita. She'd be the happiest about the chance to be with her friend." Because really, you're racking your brain, but you can't think of anything that Okita could personally do that would make Weiss happy. Maybe help her hunt down possible future summons, but you get the feeling that would be more like training together; enjoyable and gainful, but the latter moreso than the former.
Okita, on the other hand, is clonking her fist into her open hand, an expression of mild enlightenment, for lack of a better word, on her face. "So that's why she kept coming to me."
... Yeah, that... That's very Okita. "That's probably why, yeah. Weiss wants to spend time with you to show you that she thinks of you as a close friend and because she finds your company enjoyable."
"Mhm." With that typical Okita noise, she starts to look around. "Weiss?"
Resigning yourself to using your phenomenal cosmic powers to help Okita navigate her surroundings, you query your maids' soul avatar. "She's down a floor, over there. Just coming from lunch."
"Mhm." And if Okita drags you with her to go see Weiss, one arm clinging to one of yours, the other used to clamp onto her, that's just how it is. Though it really is a good thing you're there to translate Okita speech, actually giving Weiss the chance to understand what's going on.
Also, headpats. Okita demands a lot of headpats, for both herself and Weiss. Weiss, for her part, is a little overwhelmed by actually getting to see Okita's thought process happen in real time as you narrate it, and clearly touched by the revelation that Okita wanted to do something for her because she likes her.
It's just all pretty cute.
"So you're planning on just sleeping to stave off the need to return to Earth Bet for most of the time from here on out?" Sarah summarizes.
"Essentially, yeah," you confirm. "I won't be able to do much, but we also won't need to jump back and forth all the time... and I actually get stronger over time, so it's not like I'm not getting anything out of this."
"I think it's fine, personally," Nora adds her two cents. "Vampires are supposed to sleep for long times in their coffins and all that, so I'm happy we're getting back to some of those good old stereotypes."
Sarah just shakes her head. "Not saying I object, if you think it's for the best. And you want us to wake you up on the weekends?"
"Yeah, just feed me a bunch of blood and I should wake up. In the meantime, all I need you to do is keep my body secure so I don't accidentally get into a situation I need to revive myself in," you agree. "Make sure to keep me on schedule and everything should be alright. Oh, and in cases of emergency, of course."
"Mhm," the girl cuddling into your side makes. You aren't sure if she's deliberately imitating Okita or just doing her own thing. "I'd miss you. A lot."
Aww. "I'll miss you too, no matter how little cognizance I'll have going on at that point."
Now Nora comes for your other side. "Admit it, you, you just don't want to deal with pregnant me," she jokes.
"As if," you scoff, a hand reflexively coming up to stroke her belly. You can't feel much of anything... yet. "If it wasn't so convenient to just sleep, I would be all over you all the time and you know it."
Having so many beautiful lovers means you need enough love for all of them, and you certainly do your best on that account.
You actually threw a rooftop BBQ party the day before Beacon started, making sure to invite everyone. Tai was apologetic about being unable to attend- he had to prepare for the new school year over in Signal, just like all the other teachers- but everyone else is around, taking part in your little semi-improvised event.
Sunshine, the pool, a wide variety of delicious (non-alcoholic) drinks, several sets of seasonings on the ample amounts of steaks you're grilling... You're fairly sure you get everything just right.
Pretty much everyone enjoyed it- Okita was pouting because Weiss would be gone for most of the time, while everyone that would be going to Beacon was some degree of nervous- from Ruby needing a lot of kisses and cuddles to calm down over Weiss' outward indifference that still got kisses and cuddles to Yang being downright boisterous about the whole thing.
Ren was calm as per usual, while Nora was being hyper as per normal. No real need for you to motivate or calm either of them.
Still, at the end of the day, you send everyone off to get some sleep with your blessings and actually make sure to get Ren a little something, to boot. More for good luck than anything, really.
Though really, Ren seemed to appreciate it. You based the idea around oriental dragons as they are sometimes depicted, at least back on Earth Bet; turns out your time as a civilian in Brockton Bay with its high refugee and immigrant density actually paid off once again.
It's small enough to wrap itself around Ren's arm or camouflage itself as a green scarf around his neck, but fairly powerful insofar as it can fire these energy blasts out of its mouth, and the pearls it's clutching can be used to revive it after its aura has been depleted through either overuse or damage... or as explosives, funnily enough.
They take a while to form and consume a generous amount of aura to do so, but it's not like aura is at a premium anytime but during a fight, which should hopefully be a rarity inside the walls of Beacon.
You swear, if those people don't keep your kids (all of them) safe, Glynda's glorious everything aside, you will tear the entire place down by hand and rebuild it better. You don't care Ozpin is probably the leader of that big conspiracy you've joined.
Aside from that, all Ren had to deal with was keeping Nora from trying to have Pinky the Sloth fight his 'pet' as she hummed fighting music and keeping her from trying to eat Ruby's fairy... literally, once, when she was on a sugar high after depleting her aura to have the thing create a literal river of chocolate right into her mouth.
An idea you'll have to copy for another time yourself.
"Okay, remember the very moment anything happens, douse me in blood to wake me up," you caution Sarah. "And I mean literally anything that could maybe potentially require my presence."
"I got it, Gabe, I got it." Your sister, for her part, seems annoyingly calm about this. "I have all the contact information for your little conspiracy buddies, the Glenn facility's expansion is automated for the most part and everyone has their own thing to do with the kids off to Beacon. Relax and go to sleep already."
You grumble a little longer about this whole thing, but in the end, with both Sarah and Nora (who came along after a little while, most likely called by Sarah) pushing you to go into hibernation for the week already, you ultimately comply. Whose idea was it to do this again?
Of course, as you lie on your bed and drift off, the state of your consciousness receding from your body and becoming much, much more distant, you still just barely manage to make out what happens around yourself for a moment longer.
"So I just put all the chocolate on him, pyuun?"
"Yep. Cover him in it. Especially down here. It'll be delicious."
Bugger, they had the same idea as you and called one of the fairies you left behind for it. Ah well, at least they're having fun.
"I still can't believe you got into Beacon at the same time as me," Yang said, not sounding really unhappy about it. "Guess you're just that awesome, huh, sis?"
"Well, some of us are a little faster about some things," Ruby smugly replied. "I-"
"I don't want to hear about it," Yang cut her off, looking out the bullhead they were riding to Beacon Academy. "Seriously, just don't."
"You're obviously just jealous." Looking in the opposite direction, Ruby raises her nose into the sky with crossed arms. "I understand, I'd be too if someone else easily landed such a great catch. Isn't that right, Sweetypie?"
"Pyuun!"
"Urgh!" The sisters had been having this conversation for a while already at this point, so they were really just retreading old ground by now.
That said, they were both more than ready to concentrate on something else, Yang because she just didn't want to think of sweet, innocent Rubes in that way and Ruby because she knew it would be a long fight to get what she wanted either way.
"Bluaargh!"
That didn't mean either of them appreciated the thought of being vomited on, either.
"Stay away! Stay away! Not in this direction, vomit boy!"
"Don't you dare get it on my shoes!"
Weiss Schnee was having a surprisingly nice day, all told. First she arrived in Beacon ahead of schedule, as the personal bullhead she had to take as the Schnee heiress did not have to concern itself with her luggage thanks to the maid Gabriel specifically created for her could carry several times the dust she was originally planning on bringing with her, then she even managed to meet acquaintances of hers!
Even if they seemed to be arguing.
"Yes, I'm happy for you and all, but you still have to go and make some other new friends, okay?"
"That's bullshit and you know it, Yang!"
"Hello, you two!" Weiss' greeting broke Ruby and Yang out of their discussion. "What might you be talking about?"
"Oh, I was just saying Ruby should use this opportunity to make new friends!" Yang exclaimed.
"Oh, is that all? I would gladly be your friend, Ruby." For some reason, Weiss' smile seemed to surprise the two sisters. Was it her scar? Was it doing something weird? She knew Gabriel told her it was nice, but-
"I'm happy to be your friend, Weiss!" Weiss stoically endured the sudden hug from Ruby. This was alright. It also made for her second friend after Okita!
Basking in that feeling of achievement, Weiss didn't even realize Yang was sneaking off.
There was also that one blonde boy, but she just shoo'd him off without listening to what he was saying. "Come on, Ruby, let's go look for Pyrrha. She has to be here somewhere."
"Lead on, friend Weiss!"
"Wake up, lazybutt!" It shouldn't surprise Ren the first thing to greet him as he woke up was Nora's face, but he was still used to waking up like a sane person after so long spent at the mansion.
"It's morning, it's morning, it's morning, it's mooorning~!"
Which was a few days, admittedly.
Letting the usual cascade of Nora rain onto him as he prepared himself for the morning, he thought back on what had been happening yesterday. They'd come to Beacon, found the others to say hi, attended the ceremony and ultimately slept in the temporary arrangements Beacon had set up.
Apparently, there was no point in getting them rooms before they survived the initiation. It just made sense.
Nora had to be convinced to wait until they knew how teams were put together before they could plan on how to be on the same team, and Ren actually helped a blonde guy find his locker (he didn't remember having to count to 636, apparently) in the locker rooms. While they were at it, they greeted both Weiss and Pyrrha who were chatting about... friendships? With each other near a bench.
Weiss hadn't quite realized Pyrrha was her friend and insisted on making it official, from what Ren understood. His and Nora's new acquaintance, Jaune, briefly tried to hit on Weiss, but was swiftly shot down as Weiss bluntly told him she was taken.
Ren just pat his shoulder where he fell. He probably... shouldn't tell him the details on that one.
'Would all first year students please report to Beacon Cliff for Initiation? Again, all first year students...'
"Come on, we have to get to initiation," Ren said, nodding towards the loudspeaker up on the wall.
"I know, I just... Haah, I probably shouldn't let this keep me down."
"Right, right! Come on, I'm sure you can get on a good team!" Trust Nora to keep everyone's spirits up.
Just at that moment, Ruby and Yang came along. "Oh, hey, Ren, Nora, Vomit Boy."
"Oh come on, seriously with the nicknames already? My name's Jaune!"
"I'm sure, Jaune, I'm sure," Ruby snickered. "Now come up, we have to go!"
"Birdie, no!" Ruby felt really bad about it, too.
Still, nothing she could do about it now. Instead, the annoyingly short girl unlatched Crescent Rose, hooking her around a thick branch and bleeding some of her momentum off before unhooking herself and hitting the ground running.
The first person to meet her eyes, right? She had to make sure to find Yang! Or Weiss! Or Ren and/or Nora! Or Pyrrha, even if she'd barely talked to the redhead yet. Though she wouldn't mind changing that if-
"Oh, hey Weiss!"
"Hello, Ruby," the white-haired girl smiled.
Ren glared at the king taijitu suspiciously. Was it really dead? He had just shot a few times and blown holes into-
Okay, it was dissolving now. It sure had been some bad luck, practically hitting a big Grimm when he landed. Now where-
Nora sounds. Coming from... Above.
"Told you nobody would expect it."
Yang burned, using her semblance to beat the crap out of the ursa. It was nice to finally have something to pummel that didn't just dodge or deflect and hit harder than she could take it.
The second one coming in from behind had surprised her, but she just had to teach these little shitbears what happened to anyone that touched her hair!
Laying into number one with a quick combo, she incinerated an entire patch of forest, turning to number two with a confident smirk... only for it to fall over, dead and dusting.
"Why, hello there," she greeted the girl with the ribbon. Her new partner.
Pyrrha sped through the forest, having saved the boy named Jaune on the way down with a quick long-distance throw. He really should have known better than to wait with the landing strategy until it was too late.
Then again, perhaps he just had no way to do it? She wouldn't want to presume everyone was at the same level from the start.
Either way, she may as well look out for him a bit. She was perfectly capable enough to do it on the side.
Blake wished she could use her semblance to just disappear entirely. Please, please please don't let the blonde recognize her!
"Hello."
Weiss looked at the little fairy dubiously. "Why did you even bring it with you?"
"Sweetypie is an excellent tactical advisor and can create emergency provisions!" Right, and Weiss would believe that when she saw it.
"Mwuah? Does Ruby want some snacks, puun?"
Weiss just gave Ruby a look that said 'see?'
"Just you wait, Weiss! She's great with this." Rubbing the stomach of Gabriel's creation just pulled from her satchel, Ruby gave Weiss a wink. "Sweetypie, Sweetypie, how do we find the way to the ruins with the relics?"
"Pyuun? Pyaaahn," the fairy yawned. "When Sweetie wants to find a place, she just flies up to look around..."
Ruby gave Weiss a smile. "Ruby..." She warned.
Ren tried his best to hold on, the frequent explosions thundering behind them just making it harder. "Why are we doing this?" He called out. "Are we here just to suffer?"
The ursa he was riding seemed to agree with the sentiment, if only momentarily. Nora, on the other hand...
"WEEE-HAHAHAHA!" Using Magnhild in its hammer form and holding it steady, Nora was detonating the grenades within, blowing the ursa they were riding on away repeatedly. Literally, as they were currently riding through the skies. "I AM THE QUEEN OF THE CLOOOUUUDS!"
Doing his best not to vomit, Ren just looked around and- was that a giant nevermore? With people riding on it?
"KYAAAAAA!"
Pyrrha resolved herself to never, ever let Jaune decide anything ever again.
"HEEELP MEEE!" Swinging on the deathstalker's tail (she told him those signs at the cave's entrance were suspiciously scorpion-shaped), Jaune jangled around and made it too dangerous to fire her weapon. Even if he had a lot of aura to start with, he only had it ever since she unlocked it shortly prior to entering the cave they had just burst out of.
"Jaune! Whatever you do, don't let-" With another scream, the boy was catapulted off the angry deathstalker's tail.
Well, so much for that. She could stay there and fight it, but... Jaune was somewhere in the forest completely defenseless, and she would take a bit to do this, even with Gabriel's love in her weapon.
... Well, she was racing through the trees with the giant Grimm on her tail, she supposed.
"Ruby, this is a terrible idea, and I want you to know it!" Weiss had to make sure Ruby was conscious of it.
"It's fiiine! Stop worrying!" Blasting another shot from the scythe embedded inside the nevermore they had catapulted themselves onto by launching from a bent tree and using both Ruby's weapon's recoil and Weiss' glyphs, Ruby continued steering them, to the Grimm's screeching.
"Oh, you're insufferable!"
Yang looked over the 'relics' arrayed in the ruins. "Well, this place wasn't that hard to find. Looks like we weren't the first here, though. How 'bout a new pony?"
"Whatever." Her companion, Blake, as she had found out, wasn't the wordiest of people, but that was alright.
"Okay, now all we need to do is get back to the cliff, right?"
Unfortunately, just at that moment, a huge ursa came flying through the sky, impacted in the side by a bonde boy, that Jaune guy, if she wasn't wrong, leaving two people, the siblings she'd seen at the mansion, to fall to the earth.
"Nora, please. Don't ever do that again," Ren, the male sibling, said.
The girl, Nora (or Nora II.) sauntered towards them, face practically hitting the white rook. "I'm queen of the castle! I'm queen of the castle~!" She sung while dancing a little, balancing the chess piece on her head.
"NORA!"
"I'm coming, Ren!"
"Did... Did they just fall from the sky?" Blake asked, giving voice to Yang's concerns.
Just then, they heard thunderous crashing, a sound that had been coming from further in the forest for a bit now, though Yang had been ignoring it to focus on what was happening right in front of her. And, as it turned out, there was a deathstalker chasing the Pyrrha girl as she came towards them, a clawswipe neatly dodged by a quick jump. "Was she just running from that thing the whole way here?"
And then, Ruby fell from the sky, elegantly landing right before the ruins. "Yang!" She exclaimed as soon as she saw her.
"Ruby?!" Seriously, what was even happening anymore?
"NORA!" Aaand Nora jumped between the two of them.
"Why did you leave me?!" Weiss, she remembered that voice, called. Looking up, it turned out she was hanging onto the biggest nevermore Yang had ever seen by her rapier sticking out of its side.
"I told her to jump!" Ruby pouted.
Yang wanted to scream and tell everyone to stop doing crazy things, but... if she did, she knew Gabriel would pop up out of nowhere or something.
Pyrrha ducked under a tail thrust, rolling to the side to let the huge deathstalker's charge completely miss her. If she wasn't mistaken, Jaune had joined the group up ahead already, so she could stand to slow down a little.
"We need to slow it down!" Ruby, if she remembered right, said aloud.
Weiss nodded in turn. "Leave it to me!" Dashing forwards, her white-haired friend passed Pyrrha as she raised her rapier, letting its swoop downwards for a moment to create a field of sudden ice, growing from the ground up to freeze half of Pyrrha's pursuer's legs in a precise wave.
It clicked its claws, but was otherwise unable to tear itself loose for the moment. More worryingly, a giant nevermore was flying in overhead, positioning itself to...
Jumping backwards, Pyrrha deflected one of the lance-like feathershafts with her shield, Akoúo̱ banging in the resounding clash. The nevermore, on the other hand, had to flee as Ruby opened fire from her folded-up weapon, screeching as holes were shot into its stomach and sides.
Giving Weiss a nod and moving on, the two of them joined the rest of the group, a total of eight students-to-be gathered before the ruins. "What do we do? Can we fight two elder Grimm like this?" Yang asked, visibly gauging their chances.
"We don't need to," Weiss shook her head. "Our objective is right here."
"She's right." Ruby casually pointed a thumb. "Our mission is to grab an artifact and make it back to the cliff. Fighting them isn't part of that, necessarily."
Weiss gave her a happy nod.
"Run and live. I can agree with that," Jaune said.
Pyrrha looked over to Ren and Nora, but neither of them seemed to be disagreeing, so off they went. Unfortunately, however, the ice binding the deathstalker in place was already cracking, and as they soon found, the straight line back to the cliff they had been launched from involved a vast set of ruins, bridging a deep and even vaster crevice.
"This is not good," Ren said. "The nevermore is coming back around, too. What now?"
The deathstalker was almost upon them, too, their plan to just lead it to the area it could not climb up after them up in smoke, even as said nevermore approached from the front. An alternative approach might be needed.
Opening fire (and finding Miló's fire pleasingly effective in penetrating through the deathstalker's armor), Pyrrha waved everyone else over towards the nearest bridgehead. "Go! Go!"
The rest of the group followed suit, either running or opening fire for a moment to open the others up to run themselves. The nevermore, unfortunately, objected, and came flying underneath them, croaking viciously as it rammed into the bridge to the bigger structures, trapping Pyrrha, Ren, Yang and the black-haired girl with the deathstalker, while everyone else was caught on the other side.
"We need to get over there and help them!" Pyrrha could hear from Jaune, Nora just laughing before something exploded.
Yang, on the other hand, sighed. "Hey, partner, can we go over and help my little sister out?" To a nod, she looked over at Pyrrha and Ren, their partners (according to the first eye contact rule) coming flying already. "You guys good here?"
They both nodded, and so Yang grabbed the other girl and jumped, firing her gauntlets to pick up speed mid-flight.
"Okay," Jaune asked, holding his shield before him, "what do we do?"
"We hit it harder!" Nora had a way with words, didn't she? Nodding, Pyrrha looked around. No obstructions between them, open field. Transforming Miló into its rifle form again, she took aim.
"Disable the stinger or the legs!" She called out as she followed suit, the legs a hard target due to the way the pincers were waving in front of them. Even so, still, her new payloads simply melted holes into them, so she was still achieving something.
"Whoah, seriously, what are you shooting?!" Jaune exclaimed in shock in response to the sight. Obviously enough, her lover's love was extremely impressive.
"Leave the stinger to me! Nora, distract it!" To a nod from his sister, Ren ran right at their enemy, a rain of pink grenades going down around it and veiling it in a billowing cloak of equally pink smoke. Her rate of fire really was nice for things like this.
When the deathstalker burst out of the cloud, it was greeted with Ren immediately parrying the pincer coming for him, jumping onto its body and piercing the tail just before its tip. Proceeding to fire his also newly enhanced rounds of what Gabriel called ion lasers right into its flesh, the deathstalker began screeching and trying to throw him off, to no avail.
Perceiving the opportunity for what it was, Pyrrha called out. "Nora!" Switching Miló to its sword form, she advanced, covering Nora's approach as she fought off the pair of pincers trying to grab her.
"Careful, it's seen you!" Jaune's warning let Nora jump above the tail strike thrusting Ren forwards, a smile on her face as she landed on Pyrrha's offered shield.
Pushing her comrade upwards, Pyrrha swiftly retreated, positioning the deathstalker just right as Jaune joined in to help, his sword cutting into a joint halfway before he moved on beyond the aggressively charging Grimm.
Just in time, as Pyrrha did the same, Nora having steadily accelerated her descend with her hammer to slam onto the half-severed tail, tearing it straight off and through the creature's heavy plating.
The moss-covered deathstalker unsteadily attempted to turn and continue the fight, but a steady barrage of concentrated fire from Pyrrha, Ren and Nora left its legs along the left side crippled in short order. From there, it was simply a matter of bombarding it from afar until it was safe to take it out from up close.
Looking up, Pyrrha made sure the others were doing alright, too.
Blake sighed in her partner's, Yang's, grasp. She guessed this would be her life now.
Throwing out Gambol Shroud and embedding the knife end in stone, she yanked them around, avoiding the giant nevermore still trying to snatch them out of the air.
They landed a little closer to the other two girls as she dislodged and reeled in her weapon, Yang's sister and Weiss Schnee, as Blake understood it.
"It's too large and too fast to kill it quickly," the girl in red said. "And it can shrug off most minor stuff. We have to hit it with everything we have!"
And here Blake was still busy hoping nobody recognized her. From the time she'd broken into the Livsey mansion or the now two pornos she'd taken part in to afford her backup dust provisions. The good stuff did cost quite a lot, after all, in no small part thanks to the SDC's monopoly.
At least she'd finally figured out she was also kinda into women? Small mercies.
Anyways, agreeing with the instructions given, Blake opened fire, only to be surprised at the discrepancy between the damage she was causing and what the others did. Where her dust ammunition was blowing small chunks out of the nevermore where they hit, thanks to the higher grades of dust her new source of income allowed her to use, red girl was boring sizeable holes with every blast of whatever her weapon did.
Blake would suspect a semblance, except similar glowing, recoil-less shots were coming from the others too, Yang punching them out of her gauntlets for broader, less deep results and the Schnee cycling between different kinds of dust effects and more of the short, but devastating shots.
The nevermore made a few more attempts at crashing the ruins they were standing on, clearly trying to knock them into the ravine below them, but each of the huntresses-to-be were fast and mobile enough to easily evade the worst of it, jumping or recoiling along until they had stable ground to stand on again.
Swinging onto a stone platform, Blake frowned. It really was tougher than it looked, even if the others' ammunition seemed to be ignoring its toughness entirely. "None of this is working," she complained.
Yang's sister and the Schnee exchanged a look. "Best I kill it," the white-haired girl said. Exchanging nods, the redhead glanced over at Blake.
"I have a plan."
Blake was not sure about this 'plan', but it was too late to complain now, she supposed.
Weiss Schnee, if she wasn't mistaken about the only Schnee of the correct age's identity, positioned herself, as did Blake. Throwing her Gambol Shroud, Blake watched as Yang's sister shot a few bullets (actual bullets, for the recoil) out the back of her scythe to pick up speed, turning around herself until Yang jumped on, subsequently throwing her up in the air where the nevermore was currently turning.
Impacting the birdlike Grimm, the blonde proceeded land a series of punches against its head where she was holding hserself with one hand and both legs, hammering on again and again while using recoil to increase her force.
They really did do that a lot, didn't they?
A few precise hits later, she was steering their adversary against the cliff wall, assisted with a few careful shots fired by her sister. Jumping off, she was replaced by Weiss Schnee and said sister, a quick cut gouging a great rent through the nevermore's hide and a wall of ice encasing a chunk of its tail along with a leg.
Both of them jumped away again, helped along by the Schnee semblance glyphs appearing in the air to let them move faster, the red haired one moving up to hook her scythe around the nevermore's throat and drag it with her.
Handing the other girl coming right back at her part of Gambol Shroud, Blake swung her around, more glyphs speeding her ascending turn up until she was moving as fast as she would go right back at the nevermore.
Practically nailing the Grimm bird against the wall, she impacted it, piercing her weapon along with a good bit of her arm straight through and inside the creature. Doing... something, Blake could clearly see the effects of the dust being triggered, a mound of rock pushing the Schnee away and clear of the explosion taking out the giant bird's entire chest.
Well, that was that, then. And if they all got to ride up the cliff on a translucent giant nevermore, Blake wasn't about to complain... much.
The naming of the teams, traditionally, was the time when pairs would be teamed up into teams of four, the social constructs that would determine the rest of each and every individual student's time at Beacon Academy.
Of course, not every team lasted for the rest of one's life, or even through Beacon, but more often than not, the bonds whose forging began in these moments did.
"Pyrrha Nikos. Lie Ren. Nora Valkyrie. Jaune Arc. The four of you retrieved the White Rook pieces. From this day forward you will work together as... Team Nirvana. Led by... Pyrrha Nikos."
"See? Told you," Jaune whispered.
The headmaster of Beacon Academy, generally only known as Headmaster Ozpin, always insisted on announcing the newly formed teams of huntsmen and huntresses personally, taking a certain level of joy as one might from hard work paying off, or a piece of art finished and up to one's standards.
"And finally, Blake Belladonna, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee and Yang Xiaolong. The four of you retrieved the White Knight pieces. From this day forward you will work together as... Team Ruby. Led by... Ruby Rose."
Gasping, Yang hugged her sister. "I'm so proud of you!"
It was in moments like these that things were decided, that leaders were made and that friendships were formed or destroyed, when taken in retrospect. But for the moment, everything that happened was responsibility suddenly rested on shoulders that had absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
"Weiss! Weiss, get up!" Weiss Schnee would readily agree that she was born in the lap of luxury, being the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, but even so, she was very much used to having to carefully ration her time to attend to her various duties, mostly pertaining to her schooling and training. Early mornings were something she was used to.
That was not to say she was a morning person, however. Hence her reliance on coffee to get anything done. Where was-
"WEISS!" Wincing at the loud noise, the white-haired girl turned her head. Why was Ruby...
Right. Beacon, dorms, she got it. "Ruby..." Weiss groaned out, resisting the unseemly urge to rub the sleep out of her eyes. "Why?"
"It's a grand new day, Teammate Weiss, and that means we have much to do! Now that you're awake, we can officially begin our first order of business!" Their team leader was being far too chipper for the time, Weiss was feeling.
"No, I meant why can't I find my morning coffee?" Weiss pitifully exclaimed.
"So to start with, could you let go of by breast?" Ruby asked. Realizing why she could not find the handle, Weiss lowered her arm, blushing.
Confusion addling her brain, she numbly looked around, searching for the source of her salvation but coming up blank. "What is it we're up so early for?"
"Decorating!" A grinning Yang said, various paraphernalia in her hands.
Blake, as she had found out yesterday, nodded, holding up a briefcase herself. "We still have to unpack. And... clean up," she added when it opened by its own accord, her belongings scattering on the floor.
"Weiss, Blake, Yang and their fearless leader Ruby embark on their first mission! Banzai!"
""Banzai!""
Ignoring her teammates' shenanigans, Weiss mumbled to herself as she crawled over to where she had left her own bags, entirely unconcerned with the fact her sleeping clothes revealed her lack of underwear. A bit of searching as her jumbled mind led her astray as to the location she left it in for a moment, she soon victoriously held out a blue, pearl-like gem.
Injecting her aura by stroking her fingers along it as she had become used to doing, she soon had a perfect maidservant standing before her, courtesy of Gabriel's perfect... Gabriel-ness.
She really missed the mansion already.
"Good morning, Mistress Weiss. What might you require of me today?" The blue humanoid asked with a curtsy.
"Coffee..." Weiss groaned out.
"One coffee, just how you like it, coming right up, Mistress." Inserting a hand into the 'core' of herself she had 'grown' from just now, Weiss' maid soon presented her with a cup of liquid life of just the perfect temperature, with the correct amount of milk and sugar (plentiful of both, in other words) added.
Weiss experienced a small, small slice of heaven. It wasn't the same as being held in Gabriel's arms after waking up, as she'd been able to arrange a few times, but she would just have to make do.
"Wait, Gabriel gave you a maid?" Ruby asked, what looked like a copy of the delightful little sweets fairies Gabriel had flying around the mansion peeking out of Ruby's satchel.
"... Who is Gabriel and what's his day job?" Blake asked.
Weiss just ignored them as her eyes closed. Glorious, glorious coffee.
"Gabriel is... complicated," Yang explained as she taped her poster smack-dab onto the wall. And wasn't the tip of the iceberg... "He's kind of an artist we know, but he's also a huntsman, an inventor, his semblance is completely ridiculous as you can see with the maid and the fairy and... stuff. His mansion's full of the slimy versions of the maid, they're pretty creepy to look at."
"I humbly protest the description of my sisters. They are 'cute'," the semblance creation in the corner disagreed, Weiss pulling stuff out her- it
"He's also Ruby's toy-boy, though, which is where we got these cool weapon upgrades from." That was her story and she'd stick to it.
"Hey!"
"It's the truth and you know it, Rubes!"
"So... he doesn't have anything to do with... faunus rights groups, or the like?" Blake hesitantly asked.
"Now that you mention it, I think he said something about volunteering at a gig he pulled from the ground a while ago. He seemed really passionate about it, too." Yang had nearly forgotten parts of that conversation, though to be fair, that was the time Ruby started to call her a pervert. Of all things.
"... I'll be back in a moment." And Blake was off to the bathroom. Ah well, morning and all, Yang totally got it.
Blake sat on the toilet, doing her best not to scream as she held her face in her hands. They knew the man that'd-!
Deep breaths. Okay, hands up top. Her kittens were still snug hidden under her ribbon as they were, so it was alright. Nobody would recognize her as the faunus with the big kittens even if they saw the- ...
The pornos she'd been part in producing? That sounded okay. The... the pornos, that strictly speaking weren't even two distinct productions, honestly. Say about OnlyFauns what one wanted, but they were pretty creative; her identity as NinjaKitten had a whole rich and interesting backstory, about a young woman fleeing from her home following perhaps questionable decisions and making her way in the world, eventually seeking to become a protect... tor... of the people... as a ninja. Hidden in plain sight.
Oh, Brothers damn it.
Ignoring her whole... sudden existential crisis for the moment, the first quick (or 'quick') shoot had just been a single scene, more an introductory sequence to her as an 'actress' than anything else, defining her character and opening up possible 'movies' down the line, such as her being 'trained' by the other actresses that'd been interested.
As she'd also done, later on, for what they'd called the 'full' salary. Blake still shuddered when she thought of the amount of zeroes she'd seen on her bank account afterwards.
And now, all of a sudden, she couldn't help but think of Weiss Schnee's blank bottom carelessly shown from under her nearly seethrough white pajama onepiece, and how much that situation had reminded her of when she'd been supposed to stay on all fours and 'service' others, both those that had been standing upright and stretching their asses as they were on the ground themselves.
Blake shuddered. Both human and faunus actresses had been part of that, and she'd almost reflexively dropped down and gotten busy with Weiss right then and there, without thinking. And somehow, just a little, her distaste for the rich heiress with an honest-to-god maid aura construct at her beck and call wasn't as biting as it'd been yesterday.
Damn Livsey and his way of actually making sense... somehow.
"Hey Blake? You okay in there?" Ruby's voice came through the door.
"I'm fine, just a moment," Blake returned. Dammit, quiet time was up.
Yeah, this was... probably not good. Turned out they just didn't have enough room to do everything everyone wanted at once, resulting in a jumbled mess with the beds partially thrown onto each other. As a team leader, Ruby could not allow this to state of affairs to perpetuate!
Lest they actually just kept it like this.
"This, isn't going to work," Weiss also concluded.
Blake blinked slowly, as though in agreement. "It is a bit cramped."
"Maybe we should ditch some of our stuff," Yang shrugged.
"Or we could ditch the beds..." Ruby reasoned, getting the best idea ever, "and replace them with bunk beds!"
A quick vote to overpower a reluctant Weiss later, they were at work!
"Objective complete!" Dusting off her hands, Ruby looked at the result of their work. Truly, when working together, there was nothing they couldn't-
"Excuse me, Mistresses," Weiss' maid, blue and clear as she stood in the corner, said, "but I believe Master Gabriel, if he were present, would demand me to offer my aid in this."
Pulling a buzzsaw, a toolbox and what Ruby recognized to be a specialized hacksaw out of herself, Gabriel's creation gave Team RWBY a graceful bow. "Please, leave securing these 'bunk beds' to this servant while you hurry on to classes. They begin at nine o'clock sharp, while the current time is exactly... 8:50 o'clock."
"Oh my gosh, quick everyone, it's nearly time and we cannot possibly be late! On the first day no less!" Weiss immediately darted out the door, the rest of team RWBY quickly follwong after her.
"Go! After Weiss! She looks like she knows where to go!" Ruby exclaimed, giving team NRVA a wave as she went, their dorm room right opposite theirs and containing a differently colored maid. "Classes!"
"She's right!" Jaune stated, and before long, they all were on a merry chase deeper into Beacon Academy.
And if a pair of bodies controlled by the exact same mind gave each other a knowing smirk as they got to work, then this was only par for the course.
And similarly, if a certain headmaster and the accompanying vice-headmistress observed them for a moment, it surely had no bearing whatsoever.
"Come, Glynda, leave the children to their fun. We have our own appointment to keep."
James Ironwood, General of the Atlesian Military, a position unique in all the kingdoms due to the lack of a real distinct military anywhere but Atlas, and Headmaster of Atlas Academy, leaned back in his office chair, satisfied.
Finally. It had taken him some time, but in the end, there was only one IronCock, if he had to bear the name of the game, so to say, and he clearly was the one and only contender for the title. Nevermind that the entire little video game was technically illegally developed using his countenance and distributed during what technically fell under the newly coined term of cyber-terrorism; it had a public leaderboard, and James refused to let any name other than 'Proud_Iron_Wood' claim the highscore.
Pointless literal dickmeasuring against the entirety of Atlas? Perhaps. But actually acting against the software's distribution would cause more harm than it would help at this point, and so he had simply resigned himself to going with the flow. And that meant crunching the numbers, coldly analyzing 'IronCock's' moveset and that of each and every Grimm in the game, training his thumbs mildly in his pursuit of the very highest score.
But alas, he had somewhere else to be. Metaphorically speaking. Ozpin had called for a meeting, which was unusual for him, so he had best-
General Ironwood repressed a frown. Somehow, 'PendingPenny' had just taken first place. Again.
As soon as this teleconference was over, he would correct this mistake.
Headmaster Ozpin, of Beacon Academy, sat at his desk, the conference through the Cross Continental Transmission System starting. It really was a marvel of human ingenuity, allowing seamless communication across entire continents, a feat that mere decades ago would have been unthinkable. Not without reason had the peace conference to end the Great War required immense amounts of security precautions to ensure no foul play would take place from any side.
That did not mean he would not make everyone come to Vytal again if he had the choice, of course; symbols had a power all their own, and the peace conference had been a mighty symbol indeed.
Either way, here they were. James Ironwood, headmaster of Atlas Academy. Leonardo Lionheart, headmaster of Haven Academy. Professor Theodore, or just Theodore as he preferred, headmaster of Shade Academy, with Xanthe Rumpole undoubtedly listening in, as was Glynda Goodwitch on his own side.
Always good to confirm his old age did not deteriorate his mental faculties too far.
"Hello, everyone," Ozpin began the meeting. "I would ask how you all have been, but I heavily assume you would have messaged either me or another member of our little group if any particularly urgent matters required support."
"Indeed. Shade has been busy enough with the cleanup of the Asturias thing, but there's been nothing new ever since," Theodore said, confirming CFVY had performed as expected when they'd been sent to Vacuo.
"Yes, nothing new in Mistral, either," Leonardo nodded.
"Just a few pranks on Atlas' part of the CCTS, as you might have heard," James added his own news. "As I seem to have been taken to be the main character in a softcore-pornographic parody game, I have taken it unto myself to achieve the national high score in my down time."
Few things could be as stunning as a man like James Ironwood telling this to their gathering of some of the most powerful men in the world, but alas, Ozpin, it would seem, still was not the same calibre of man as Theodore. "Hahaha! Guess I'll lose that one bet, after all."
"Yes, be that as it may," Ozpin interjected, "we had best leave further action up to Atlas' specialists while we take care of other matters. I myself have had a pleasing start of the school year, even if things may have become a little... interesting... lately."
Typing and physically dragging a few files around the screens he was working with, Ozpin prepared to show them what he was talking about. Before long, several short clips taken from the Emerald Forest's cameras played out for them, highlighting the disastrous effect of these new weapons on the Grimm.
"What exactly are we looking at?" James asked, obviously quite interested as holes were added to an otherwise immensely resilient deathstalker.
"Simply put? New weapon systems. Developed from nowhere and brought to a select few students of Beacon Academy by a single man, as far as we were able to ascertain, and completely without dust, it seems," Ozpin explained.
The (figurative) room froze. "How sure are you of this?" James requested.
"A trustworthy informant observed the entire process of creation, and as best he could tell, no dust was involved." No guarantee by any means, but Ozpin felt secure in sharing his current state of knowledge. "Interestingly, the same man claimed to have the resources to build an entire army of robots based on this technology. For the time being, he has requested access to the old Mountain Glenn ruins to do so, which has been granted. We will see how that goes, shall we?"
"Ozpin, that is great news!" James exclaimed, visibly restraining himself from jumping out of his seat. "Whether it gives us a detached robotic force independent of the Atlesian Military or advanced weaponry that can be built significantly cheaper than commonly accepted, this is an immense boon to our forces across the board."
"It is, though I am as of yet keeping a distance from young Mister Livsey, for caution's sake. I wish to review what we know about him so as to judge whether he should be... brought on board, so to say, and to get everyone's opinion on this," Ozpin explained why he called this meeting.
"I see. You did not want to repeat that... mishap... with the Branwen twins," Leonardo concluded. "Very well. What have you found, so far?"
Behind him, Glynda sighed, but held her piece. They had spoken about this at length, but she did understand his caution in this regard, a stance he much appreciated.
Reception in Menagerie was... spotty, to say the least, but some days they got decent access to the CCTS, allowing the faunus of Kuo Kuana to receive news without having to travel to the mainland, at least.
Kali Belladonna was certainly using these opportunities if and when they came up. Her poor hubby may be very busy with the administration of Kuo Kuana, but she had to keep abreast of the newest changes all over the kingdoms as best she could, still, if only to ensure they would not be blindsided by sudden developments.
Naturally, as a faunus heavily concerned with faunus-related news, and so it didn't take her long to find out Adam Taurus had finally openly attacked the wealthy areas of Vale... and swiftly got himself killed, along with many of the White Fang.
Kali sighed, but it was probably for the best. Now to hope that horrid boy hadn't gotten her little girl killed with himself in his senseless desire to hurt humanity.
Continuing to look, she soon came upon a much more personally interesting topic. That being-
"OnlyFauns? 'Promoting Racial Equality On All Relevant Levels'? Whoever came up with this has a sense for advertizing, at least." And with any luck, it may even be her girl behind this, or at least it might be an avenue to more information.
It did not take Kali long, however, to realize exactly what kind of racial equality OnlyFauns was promoting. Making sure nobody was nearby, she tuned the sound down and concentrated on the series of-
That. That was her little girl. NinjaKitten. Tears threatening to overwhelm her at finding her after all this time, Kali hurriedly navigated the site's menus. Where was...
Finding NinjaKitten's videos in short order, Kali took little time to find her little girl was just like her mother in her youth, laughter and tears fighting with each other as she took in the obviously unstaged first steps into making money through pornography.
At least she was doing well. It was all that counted. Now, should she tell her hubby about what she found, or should she not?
Blake looked at her bank account.
She looked at the offered payment.
She looked at her bank account again.
Dammit, she was going to get used to this standard of living before she could rein herself in, wasn't she?
Sighing, she repressed the wiggle of her kittens as she agreed to be there on the weekend, returning her attention to Professor Port's lecture.
Slowly coming to, you realize there's what feels like a bottle on your lips, held there by steady hands as blood runs from it and down your throat.
Subtly taking in the air surrounding yourself, you check your body's condition, realizing that you are naked and sitting up, your dick currently buried somewhere hot, wet and tight. Recognizing Sarah takes only a moment.
So you open your eyes and finish the bottle, your long tongue licking its opening for a moment as you look at your sister, Sarah currently busy with making sure you fit snugly inside her. "Had a good nap, sleepyhead?"
"Mhm," you make, just leaning forward to give her a long, deep kiss. "It was surprisingly nice. I drifted in and out of seeing the world through my undead for a bit, I think, and I actually dreamed a little."
"Oh? What about?" Your sister asks, leaning into you as you begin kneading her buttcheeks.
"Of you, of course," you tease her, kissing her nose. "And lots and lots of cuddles. Also of waves of chocolate covering my body, and being permanently moved into your office so you could sit on my lap while working."
"What a coincidence, I just so happened to have the exact same dreams," comes the cheeky reply. "But you didn't think I'd just let my favorite chair cushion walk out of here without one last good 'sit'?"
"Such a spoiled little sister you are..."
As it turns out, Sarah has been keeping tabs on everything going on, specifically so she could get you up-to-date as easily as possible once you're done fooling around with her.
One, the kids at Beacon had a fun first week. Their 'initiation' involved being catapulted into heavily Grimm-infested areas and told to return with some fancy doodad Headmaster Ozpin hid somewhere, apparently, and eventually turned into murdering a bunch of really huge Grimm when they wouldn't stop following them. Oh, and Weiss has a fancy flying new summon, now, from what she wrote.
And yes, the girl keeps writing letters to the mansion every other day at the very latest. She's actually a great source of information on what's going on at Beacon.
Meanwhile, OnlyFauns is doing exceedingly well, with revenue made mostly through ads and a few algorithms Sarah put together with her power to ensure relevant stuff would be shown to the right users. She's also making sure to pay the actors and actresses a handsome sum for everything they do for the Initiative, which is where the majority of earnings goes into, actually.
Over at Mount Glenn, your robot factory, automated as it is, is making the expected amount of progress so far, slowly but steadily filling up the old tunnels and caves with waves upon waves of robotic firepower, pushing back the Grimm. Some of them have started to organize a resistance, but there's really not much the things can do when any robots they destroy are replaced on the field easily enough, thanks to the teleporters and rapid response times, before the 'wounded' are reprocessed and turned into a completely fine new robot, with little to no cost involved.
Facing an endless horde of never-tiring enemies. You'd imagine it's a new experience for the Grimm to be on the other side of that equation.
Oh, and you got some other letters, too. An invitation from none other than Headmaster Ozpin, to come up to Beacon at some point during the weekend. You can only imagine it might be about your whole robot army deal.
Ducking under the paper ball coming flying your way on account of a bored Nolac (with your express permission, of course, to train your situational awareness), you continue your work.
'"... and you better remember you're mine", Bella said, clenching Jake's cock almost, just a hair shy of, painfully. "Don't you dare cheat with that bitch."
Swallowing, it was all Jake could do to nod.'
There, people are into that kinda thing, right? Looking up at the low rumble you can hear from the stairs, you click your tongue. "Time again already?"
"Guess they just can't keep their hands off you, boss," Nolac said in their female Nolan form.
Well, can't argue with that. And thus, you simply open the window, jumping out of your little atelier just as the tide of Maid storms the room once again.
If there was one thing Betty did not like, it was gettin' distracted while she was doing something. Keepin' watch of her flock of buddies was a full-time job all by itself, and she really, really couldn't afford to let her attention waver for even a second at times.
Such as right now. Which made the flock of nevermore circlin' overhead that much more of an issue. "Ser Wools! Wools tha second! Ye stay with tha flock, ya hear me!"
Like herding cats, just worse every time they saw something green and juicy-lookin'.
"Are you sure you're alright? That's an awful lot of..." The guy in the village square started, only to fall silent when the buddy squad got their weapons out with a racket of mechashifting artillery.
"Yah dun' look a' that, look a' me," Betty said, grabbing the guy's face to keep him lookin' at herself. "Naw what darection didcha say Vale was in?"
As weaponry Betty knew intimately, courtesy of having put it together out of parts herself, whined as it came alive, the sod she was asking for directions swallowed. "J-just straight west from here, pretty much. The street veers off towards the south a bit, but you can't miss it if you follow it."
"Tha heck? It was ta the north when Ah started, how'd et get to be in tha west naw?" Grumbling a bit, Betty plugged a finger to each ear for a second, the First Royal Sheep Army's Anti-Air Division opening fire and wiping the skies clean of any and all Grimm.
Focken seriously, how hard could it be to find a capital city? Especially in Vale. The place was supposed ta be easy to get to!
"Thank you!" The suddenly whimpering simp exclaimed. "Thank you so much! Our village is saved!"
"Yeah, well, whotever," Betty mumbled, already deep in thought, having heard something like that a dozen times by now. She couldn't have gotten lost that badly, could she?
"So, Sarah, the kids coming over today?" You ask, going over your plans for the day.
"Yeah, in the afternoon. Why're you asking?" Your lovely sister asks.
You shrug in the hug she's giving you. "Just planning ahead. Busy weekend ahead." Patting her head, you gently pry her off of yourself. "Are you planning to let go of me anytime soon, by the way?"
Sarah just shakes her head. "Nuh-uh. I've had to just cuddle up to your body all week, no way am I leaving up so soon. You'll just have to carry me around for today."
"Guess I'd better get someone else to take care of your digital paperwork for now, then," you chuckle. "Actually, one moment."
Concentrating, you consider what you'd need in a personal assistant slash secretary, someone that can take care of paperwork and menial office duties for you while presenting themselves as the perfect face to the public that may try to get into your office... Oh, and is hot, too.
"Mister Livsey, Miss Livsey, if I may be excused?"
Sarah pouts up at you. "You know I have to instruct her first."
You worldessly nuzzle the top of her head. Just too bad for your amazing little sister then, huh?
As it turns out, it's pretty hard to figure things out while asleep while Sarah simultaneously gropes your semi-unconscious body in protest at you going under again so soon. That said, a few hours of amusingly stubborn protesting later, you have to get up again anyways, as everyone from Beacon is coming back to the mansion!
You make sure to greet them in the entrance hall, of course, Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Ren, Nora and Pyrrha coming inside (plus some blonde dude they invited along) with varying levels of happiness evident on their faces. "Hello everyone, how've you been doing these past few days? I got Weiss' letters, of course, but tell me anyways, I can't wait to hear your voices."
"GabrielI'msohappycouldn'twaittoseeyou! Did you miss me too?!"
Ruby's greeting is about as enthusiastic as you'd expected, so you just chuckle and pat her head, though your petting arm is soon preoccupied by Weiss, Pyrrha, both Ren and Nora and even Yang for a moment, though she seems to object and bat you away. That blonde guy, though...
"So, you must be this Jaune fellow the rest of your team wrote me about, right? Nice to meet you." Holding out a hand, the dazed-looking young man mechanically taking and shaking it.
"P-pleasure to meet you?" Mhm, he seems sufficiently intimidated already, so you guess you won't have to protect Ren's virtue the hard way, after all.
The story of everyone's initiation is a lot more amusing and emotive in person, as you gather the kids in a specific room you set up just for this, with a neat table supplied with snackfood and tea of all kinds by your slime maids, a bunch of gaming 'consoles' (it's really just a specialized set of CCTS access stations you meddled with a bit) and lots of comfortable seating, from beanbags to a pair of leather sofas.
Discussion, as everyone is getting settled in, briefly centers on the fourth and currently missing member of team RWBY, Blake Belladonna, who also happens to be none other than the OnlyFauns 'employee' (it's a much more relaxed and casual thing, really) NinjaKitten. You don't mention it, of course, as nobody else says anything about your past connections via OnlyFauns, but if you aren't mistaken (which you never are), she should be scheduled for a shoot tomorrow... Something to keep in mind.
They just seem to think she's busy meeting friends in Vale, apparently.
That said, team RWBY seems to be settling in well, Weiss pouting a little at Ruby being team leader over herself (though she told you she made up for it by flouting how much you love her instead, as petty revenge) but everyone getting along fine otherwise. Blake seems to be a bit distant, being the only one that didn't know anyone before Beacon began, but you have Ruby promise to make sure she pays attention to everyone getting along with her especially.
Being team leader and all. She does seem to be running more on sheer enthusiasm than confidence on that one, but at least there have been no catastrophic failures on her watch so far, so she gets a pass from you for now.
Team NRVA, or Nirvana, under Pyrrha's leadership, is similarly off to a good start, Pyrrha constantly worrying about her team and how she should lead it. That said, Ren's making sure to help her, and the two of them share the responsibility of keeping Nora from accidentally destroying Beacon's campus in its entirety and helping Jaune catch up to a decent level of combat competency.
Speaking of the blonde addition to the team you otherwise know... Jaune sucks, to put it bluntly. He doesn't seem to have the slightest bit of experience the kind of which the other students are oozing with every motion, his weapon is basically a sword and a shield that can fold up for easier transportation... and that's it. Like, you aren't one to say anything, you've done well enough with just your claws before you came to this dimension, but it does seem... lacking, when compared to his surroundings.
That sums the boy up pretty well. Lacking. You don't want to presume or anything, he'll just... have to work hard.
Very, very hard.
In other news, Nora is very happy she gets to bum off of Ruby's sweets fairy, nicknamed Sweetypie.
"So, Jaune." The blonde boy, having been taken to the side for a moment by you, seems oddly high-strung when you talk to him. "I cannot help but notice you are a tad less... well-endowed, weapons-wise, than the rest of Beacon's new students- that I know about, anyways. Is it anything you'd like to talk about?"
He does seem to deflate hard at your words. "Yeah, hehe, it's just... my weapon's an heirloom from my grandpa, fought in the war with it and all..."
"So, I would ask whether that's a thing in your family, but I'm pretty sure you'd have to make your own personal weapon, normally," you talk him through your thought process. "Family problems? They didn't approve of you doing this?"
"I..." Jaune sighs. "Yes, my entire family didn't want me to become a huntsman, so I just sneaked out and got myself a few false papers, okay?"
... Like, you didn't expect him to come out and say it, but... "See, that just means you really have to work on everything the other students already learned," you tell him with a pat on the shoulder. "Make sure to ask your teammates for help, too, I doubt they would mind. Gotta work together for all this stuff, after all."
"Y-Yes, sir!" Aww, he's immediately respecting you. "I-I wanted to ask, all these, uh, slime-y maids and the little creatures Ren and Nora have..."
"My semblance, yes. I can create anything I can imagine, within some ill-defined limits, of course," you joke. "Actually, one moment."
Concentrating, you draw upon the particular well of power that is your aura, forming it into the already familiar shape of none other than your Carmilla minion in a swirl of colors and energy, the blonde woman patting her wide cloak.
"I am as ever at your service, Master."
"Jaune, this is Carmilla. She is a semblance creation I made specifically to train stuff. I can give quasi-semblances to my minions, you see, and hers is the power to teach others skills I have learned myself," you explain. "She takes up a lot of aura to do that, but it's easy enough to just refill her reserves if you have one yourself."
"I see!" Jaune, for all that he has no clue about this whole business, seems to be catching on to just how useful something like that would be. "Also, uh... semblances?"
... Nevermind. "I'll just leave Carmilla here to explain that to you. And don't fret, she won't torture your every living moment unless you slack off too much for her tastes," you tell him. "In the meantime, I'll go ahead and hand out a few other minions I've thought up over this last week."
As it turns out, dreaming actually does let you come up with new inspirations from time to time, ideas that just drift through what's left of your subconscious from tike to time. Though you have been playing with a few ideas in these directions for a bit beforehand, too, so...
Either way, Weiss is very, very happy about her new dust producing minion, as well as mumbling about the implications for the market at large... though she also insists she needs to dress the new type. Weird, too, since you went out of your way to actually add clothes made of the same material as her crown, the base 'this is a crystal, right?' matter you gave her to start with.
Also, you'd say the staff is a nice touch. Potential for future development, maybe.
"Any requests? I do accommodate, Miss Weiss," the blue-ish humanoid smolders at your lover.
Yang, on the other hand, actually seems surprised when you approach her next. "What, didn't think I'd just leave you out, did you?" You ask.
"N- Oh, I just thought you'd have mentioned it beforehand," Yang downplays her reaction.
"Just make sure to take good care of it, okay?"
"Reporting for duty," the buzzing voice of your latest minion comes from honey-like lips.
"... Why am I not surprised, Gabriel?" Yang facepalms.
You just pat her shoulder. "Don't worry, she can shrink! And grow into an alternate, mountable version."
"I am very rideable," the feminine bee-minion agrees.
Of course, the fact that Yang is not into giant bees only comes out later, but in your defence, how could you have known?
"I don't know whether to hug you or punch you, man."
"Come on, it won't be that bad," Velvet had said. "Making the guy pay for your stuff is supposed to be a great thing about dates when you're a girl that's into them."
Silly bunny.
"Hey you two, got Coco's stuff?" For all that Gabriel was supposed to be a guy, he was really, really good about clothes shopping. He didn't seem to like it as such, but he really, really had an eye for fashionable stuff and aaah, it just wasn't fair.
... Maybe he was gay? That would explain Coco being triggered, and she could just put this whole thing to rest.
"Got it all right here," Velvet nodded to his question, holding up a bunch of clothes the two of them had been picking out in her favorite clothing store, including, as she'd only belatedly realized, underwear prominently displayed.
Lucky underwear. Lucky bunny underwear, if one wanted to put it like that. Aaaaah.
"Great, feel free to go ahead and try it on, then," the stupidly nicely smiling man in their little group said, sending all the wrong, cross-firing signals into Coco's brain. "Hm... Actually, did I ever tell the two of you about my semblance, now that I think about it?"
"I don't think either of us even knew you had aura," Velvet chuckled, unfairly composed as she faced the guy she admitted she was low-key into, prompting Coco to feign confidence as she took her clothing pile from her. "I'm all bunny ears, though."
And now they were waggling for him. "That's it, your ears are getting punished with the brush later."
Hah, that had Velvet crouch down and hold her hands over them. "No! Not the bunny ears!" That'd teach her to be feisty about it.
Gabriel himself just smirked and pat Velvet's shoulder as Velvet finally closed the changing room's door behind herself. "Hey, plus side, you're keeping them really nice and neat? It can't be easy, keeping your ears this good looking."
Velvet laughed outside the cabin as Coco started undressing, hanging up her jacket. "You wouldn't guess, but Coco keeps on playing with them way too much whenever she's nervous. Just earlier, she-"
"SO! Hey! What was that about semblances?" Coco interrupted from inside, both of those awful people outside laughing softly in response.
"Yes, yes, don't worry, I'll tell you all about my privates, Coco," Gabriel chuckled, sending Velvet into actual chortles. "Seriously, though, I can form my aura into these little minions that can be kept up by other people. I wanted to ask if you've ever thought about having a pet bunny tear Grimm apart, Velvet? Just to really play into the stereotypes."
Still laughing in that way that used to set Coco's heart all aflutter before she got to know her better and decided she wasn't into Velvet that way after all, the bunny faunus sat down on one of the benches in front of the changing rooms, from what it sounded like. "Can't say I dislike the idea, if it's cute enough."
"Let me see what I can do," Gabriel said.
It was a few moments of silence and weird aura sounds before Velvet spoke up. "Ohmygosh, that's really, really cute. Oh geez, and this little guy can actually fight?"
"Sure can, just needs to be powered with aura all the way before it pops. It remembers what happened when I recreate it, so it's not a huge deal, but yeah."
"Ah geez, I could just rub my head against this fur all day. It's so soft! Thank you for showing it to me, Gabriel."
"For a cute girl like you, anytime," the shameless manwhore flirted with Coco's bunny.
"Do I need to come out there and protect my bunny's virtue?" She asked, not at all mildly while imagining what Velvet might be rubbing her head against right then and there.
"What, I thought Velvet was protecting your virtue by keeping me too occupied out here to follow you inside," came back from Gabriel. A not at all appealing proposition, dammit!
"Haha, I'm just happy you're getting along so well with my bunny daddy, Coco." Dammit, Velvet!
"Actually, give me a second. Can you distract Coco for a moment, Velvet?"
"Sure, what for?" Yes, what for, Gabriel? "And why do you have women's clothes?" Wait, what?
"Sec~ret~!" And with that, all that Coco could hear was the door next to her own cabin opening and closing.
"Sooo... Guess it's just me out here, then," Velvet said. "Me and my cuddly-wuddly little bunny."
Of course, seeing Gabriel emerge as a woman, claiming he could just use his semblance on himself like that once she came out changed was... not good for Coco's heart. By which she meant she may have fainted for a moment, she couldn't quite remember what happened there.
All that she knew was that she was super embarrassed about just instinctively groping Gabriel's badonkadonks, which had him (her?) chuckle and do amazing things with them until Velvet made her let go while facepalming with the other hand, then she stared with an open mouth before an incredibly soft hand came up to close in to just so Gabriel(a?) could give her a gentle kiss.
That time, she did fall unconscious momentarily, with a bleeding nose, causing Velvet to just keep apologizing for her for a while. Also, they then continued to get some ice cream and she got a creation coming from her goddess (?) too, an incredibly hot and exotic blue lady that was supposed to help with her semblance?
She just recalled swearing to herself she would worship the angel's feet to her heart's content later. Also, Velvet's blessing was, indeed, very fuzzy and soft.
Velvet sighed at the sight of Coco literally drooling all over the apparent dust-producer (and wasn't that one screwy).
"I'm sorry about my team leader, she isn't usually this bad even when she catches sight of a beautiful woman," she apologized to the sapient (?) aura construct.
"Oh, don't worry, I don't mind," the blue, half-naked woman's melodious voice responded. "She's kind of cute, isn't she?"
"I just found out way too much about her preferences," Velvet grumbled good-naturedly, trying to put the memory of Coco literally falling all over Gabriel's 'gift' out of her mind. At least they were back at Beacon now, so she could just put Coco into her corner of their room and forget about her.
Beacon Academy is more impressive in person, you decide as you stride through its gates, keeping an eye out for- there she is.
"Professor Goodwitch," you greet Beacon's vice-headmistress. "I trust I find you in good health?"
She does seem to appreciate you going all formal in your speech.
"Hello Mister Livsey, and yes, I am doing quite fine," she smiles back at you. "We have been expecting you. If you would come along, I will show you to the headmaster."
And so you do. Glynda leads you into Beacon's central courtyard, from where you soon get into an elevator bringing you up into the huge tower you could easily see from outside Beacon proper- from a good third of Vale, actually.
"I do have something else, too," you consider aloud, already activating your semblance. "You see, I have tested it out with the help of a few of Beacon's students, but I can create minions that others can maintain with enough aura. I recently developed one whose entire purpose is being supernaturally good with paperwork on behalf of others, so if you would like-"
You are cut off at that point by Glynda grabbing onto your head and driving her tongue down your throat. You answer in kind, of course, and the two of you make out passionately in the short time you have before the elevator stops.
"I very much would, yes." Glynda's words are answered by a throat being cleared, the secretary minion behind her fingering her discipline rod.
The office of one Professor Ozpin is... well, you don't want to call it 'barren', necessarily, given it has everything it needs in his desk and chair, but that's kind of everything it has.
No decorations beyond a bunch of cogs ticking away overhead, the walls bare beyond a few wide windows, not even any chairs for any visitors. Not that you want to complain all that much, mind you- undeath is great in that you don't get tired of standing on your feet, either.
"Greetings, Mister Livsey," is how the sober-looking, grey-haired man greets you. "I hope you found your way to my office without problem?"
"No problems, no," you nod back. "But let us not dither on formalities when we could both use our time much better. I assume you are the man I ought to speak to in regards to certain issues and influences all across human civilization?"
"Very astute of you," Ozpin observes. "Very well, to the meat of the matter, then. What might be your favorite fairy tale? Surely, you must remember one from your childhood."
... Well, okay then.
"Well, I'm afraid my parents weren't the biggest fans of fairy tales, or parenting in general, but if I had to name one, it'd be The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz." At Ozpin's (and Glynda's) blank looks, you shrug with a smile. "Wouldn't be surprised if you never heard of it. If I had to sum it up..."
Clearing your throat (for show), you launch into your storyteller voice, the one you used for your siblings all the time back in the day. "The story was about a young girl called Dorothy living with her aunt and uncle and her dog Toto. One day a storm sweeps over their home and Toto hid under their farmhouse's bed, so Dorothy takes too long to get to the storm shelter and is picked up by the wind along with the rest of the house."
And here, things get a little strange, so you make sure to get fittingly mysterious and whimsical, your audience obviously intrigued enough at this point. "She falls asleep after a few hours of being blown this way and that and when she wakes up, they find themselves in a strange and fantastical land, a bunch of equally strange small men and the elderly Beautiful Witch of the North telling them they landed on the Wicked Witch of the East that had enslaved the Munchkins, as they call themselves.
Dorothy has the whole typical reaction to apparently having murdered someone," you joke, giving Ozpin a smirk, "but is distracted by being given the evil witch's silver slippers before the Witch tells her the best way to find a way home is to seek out the mighty Wizard of Oz living in the Emerald City."
"Excuse me, but is that the exact name? The Wizard of Oz?" Ozpin asks, an eyebrow raised as he takes a sip of what your senses are telling you is some kind of chocolate-y drink.
"It is, yes," you agree. "Rest assured, I'm not just making this up based on your name- if anything, someone else reminded me of this tale, but more on that later. Back to Dorothy, she travels the yellow brick road, and it's important it's made of yellow bricks, the road is somewhat iconic about this story, through the well-tilled land of the Munchkins. On one of the fields lining it, Dorothy and Toto encounter The Scarecrow, that they soon release from its position on said field."
Now you're getting to your favorite part of this whole thing. "The Scarecrow tells Dorothy he wants to have brains, not possessing any by nature, and asks to come along to see the Wizard of Oz to ask him to give him his own. She agrees and Dorothy and Toto and joined by the Scarecrow."
"An interesting choice of character there," Ozpin throws in, looking at you consideringly. Glynda, to the side, seems more mildly confused than anything else, but willing to go along with things for now.
"Yeah, well, it gets better. Next off they help save the Tin Woodman that rusted while cutting down a tree that joins them to ask the wizard for his dearest wish- having a heart. And the next companion they meet is The Cowardly Lion who, after roaring at them loudly, sheepishly admits he has no courage at all and comes along to ask the Wizard to grant him some so he could be the King of Beasts."
"Quite the eclectic group," Glynda comments, subtly shoving her new secretary minion behind her at the attention she receives. "The brainless scarecrow, the heartless tinman and the cowardly lion."
"Quite!" You beam at her. "The travelers continue on their path and have to overcome several obstacles, but they overcome them all, often because of the Scarecrow's good sense, the Tin Woodman's kindness, and the bravery of the Cowardly Lion. When they finally arrive at Oz, the Guardian at the gate of the sparkling green city is surprised they want to see the Wizard, as nobody requested an audience for many years."
"Foreshadowing as it lives and breathes." Ozpin surely could've kept that one to himself, you hope.
"Oz tells them that no favours will be granted until the Wicked Witch of the West has been killed," you continue, setting up the part where the Wizard is apparently forcing the little girl and her merry animated companions into service as mercenaries. Completely unqualified ones.
"That's the north, east and west down," the headmaster slurps into his cocoa.
"Do you want me to tell the story or not?" You ask him.
"Oh, please, do not mind me, continue."
You clear your throat again. "The intrepid companions set out for the land of the Winkies the Wicked Witch of the West rules-" Ignore Ozpin's incessant smirking, ignore ignore ignore, "-where the witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and armed Winkies to stop them, all to no avail. So she uses her Golden Cap to summon the Winged Monkeys, who destroy the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and cage the Cowardly Lion, but they bring Dorothy and Toto to the witch, who enslaves Dorothy."
"Huh, didn't expect the sudden child slavery." Glynda, in response to Ozpin, shushes him down. Thank you, Glynda, there's a reason you're the MVP here.
"The witch wants Dorothy's shoes, which she knows carry powerful magic, so she contrives to make Dorothy trip and fall, so she can grab one of the shoes. An angered Dorothy throws a bucket of water at the witch, who then melts away to nothing, much to her surprise, whence she frees the Cowardly Lion and engages the help of the now free Winkies in repairing and rebuilding the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, and the friends return to Oz."
"You do realize I have friends calling me by that name, yes?" Ozpin throws in again. "It is quite perplexing to hear it in this context."
Aggressive throat clearing from your side follows. "Oz does not summon them for several days and, when he does admit them into his presence, he seems reluctant to grant their wishes. Toto knocks over a screen, revealing that Oz is just a common elderly man. However, he fills the Scarecrow's head with bran and pins and needles, saying that they are brains; he puts a silk-and-sawdust heart into the Tin Woodman; and he gives the Cowardly Lion a drink that he says is courage. Because in the end, all of them had what they wanted within themselves all along already, yes Ozpin, you don't have to say it."
Ozpin closes his mouth, just sipping from his drink instead.
"He and Dorothy make a balloon to carry them out of the Land of Oz, but the balloon flies away before Dorothy can board; Oz leaves the Scarecrow in charge of the Emerald City as he drifts away. A soldier in the city suggests Dorothy and her friends go to seek the help of Glinda, the Witch of the South to-"
"Okay, now are making it all up," Glynda interrupts, disbelievingly.
"Not at all, that's how the story was told to me," defend yourself, though you doubt your flirty grin is helping your case. "They had to save the best witch for last, after all. And so the companions overcome another variety of obstacles I have already half-forgotten to reach Glinda's castle. Glinda summon the same Winged Monkeys as the Wicked Witch of the West once did using her magical cap so they can take the Tin Woodman back to rule over the Winkies, the Scarecrow back to Emerald City and the Cowardly Lion to the forest to be king of the beasts. And only then does she tell Dorothy how to use the silver shoes she wore this entire journey to take her back to Kansas, needing nothing more than to click their heels against each other thrice and tell them where she wants to go."
"An... interesting story, Mister Livsey, but what exactly does this fairy tale have to do with why you are here?" Ozpin asks, perhaps a little too quickly. Hit the nail on the head, didn't you?
"I don't know, you were the one who asked," you shrug. "And we could've gotten through it faster if someone didn't keep interrupting."
Lots of mutual passive-aggressive throatclearing later, Glynda finally has enough of you and Ozpin not actually saying anything and launches into speech herself. "We have called you here, Mister Livsey, to fully bring you into the fold on our little conspiracy. Make no mistake, despite Headmaster Ozpin's... idiosyncrasies, he has led humanity through many a crisis, often caused by our ultimate foe."
Ozpin clears his throat one last time, sipping from what you think might actually be hot chocolate, after all. "Indeed. I was planning to draw from common fairy tales, but it seems I shall simply have to be a little more direct in the future, even if this time has proven to be most... enlightening." Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, sucker. The universe somehow managed to make him and his surroundings a play at a work of fiction in an entirely different dimension, and you sure aren't going to let him forget about it.
"Simply put, the story I was attempting to draw upon was the tale of the seasons, whence..."
And so you're made privy to the whole 'oh hey, magic is real' thing (which doesn't take much convincing on Ozpin's part, funnily enough) and how there's these four maidens running around with phenomenal cosmic powers and stuff. Also, the Grimm are apparently created and controlled by an intelligent actor, after all, which explains why they haven't been exterminated yet, and there's this whole shadow war going on about it where this 'Salem' is actively aiming to turn humanity against itself.
The robot armies, both your own and that of Atlas, are meant to both ease up on losses suffered to the human actors, the concept of huntsmen having prevailed over the ages but still costing an inordinate amount of the bravest of humanity's elite their lives, and serve as footsooldiers just in case this shadow war becomes less shadow and more just full-on war, Ozpin having urged the upper management of Atlas to continue research and development in all forms of technology ever since the Great War- which, according to him, was also put into motion by Salem herself, in fact, as a ploy to weaken humanity.
Lotta information to process there.
"Anything else I should know about that whole 'maiden' situation? I don't imagine you're making a habit of keeping everyone privy of everything, but it seems to me that'd be the one thing to cause the most issues over time," you reason. Incredibly powerful magical powers jumping from one user to the next? At random, sometimes? That's a recipe for disaster if you've ever heard one.
"Perceptive of you. Indeed, the current Fall Maiden, Amber, was attacked and for the first time in history, part of a Maiden's power was stolen through unknown methods. We heavily suspect Salem's pawns to have been responsible, but Qrow, if you recall meeting him, is currently investigating further," Ozpin explains, getting up to pace around a little, his cup still in hand. "In the meantime... Well, Amber is currently kept safe, but she has been hurt, wounded in ways that we cannot fix and leaving her comatose. Whoever attacked her, they seem to have parts of the powers she should possess, and we fear that, should she pass, the mantle of the Fall Maiden might very well transition to her fully."
"Right, which is kind of a problem," you grouse. "So how do we fix it? Murder her attacker, do the same thing and hope it works in reverse? Any way to... fiddle around with her, to wake her up from her end, that hasn't been tried yet?"
"As I said, this situation is unprecedented," Ozpin gestures vaguely with his cup. "Though if you happen to have any suggestions, I would be happy to hear them. You never did tell us where your very own technological development came from..."
It is quite amazing, the way Ozpin literally has the way to the vault, as he called it, underneath the school be in the very same elevator used to access his office.
Nevertheless, the sight of the scarred girl, lying in a pod of some kind in the cool underground space, is enough to have you concentrate on her over the way both Ozpin and Glynda are obviously keeping an eye on you, ready to intervene should it be necessary.
Overlaying with Yoshi, you quickly confirm that yes, he still distrusts and dislikes you as deeply as he can, which means nothing big happened with him since you last snooped around your souls' affairs. Turning his powers along with any and all of your own you can think of that might help on everything in sight, you quickly get a bunch of, let's call it interesting, information.
For one, this equipment you see isn't meant to preserve a person, or at least that's not its main purpose. No, instead what it is supposed to do is allow the forceful transfer of aura, technically by infusing one soul into another. The 'donor' of the operation would certainly die, but it MIGHT work to transfer the additions to Amber's soul Yoshi's power lets you see.
Further, said addition is both bonded to her soul in some intrinsic way, and very much not of human origin. However Ozpin did his thing with the maidens, it involved some external power source.
Something that makes a lot of sense when your analysis, subtly running on everything in sight, tells you that he's actually significantly older than he looks, being a... body hopper, of some kind. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
Back on Amber, though... Best you can tell, the big issue is that, however her power was taken, it involved 'tearing off' a significant portion of her soul. Souls don't really work like that, but it's the best description you can think of. Basically, the issue isn't that the foreign addition is missing, though it does seem to be leaking into itself around the edges; it's the collateral damage done in the process.
Any attempts at getting her back on her feet will have to revolve around that. First thing that comes to mind? You could thrall her. As you understand it, thralling heals even long-term disabilities, which this soul issue should count as... though you haven't exactly ever attempted to heal soul wounds through that, so whether it'd work is up in the air. Shouldn't cause any further damage, though, which is a plus.
Alternatively, you could do as you've done every time a problem or issue came to mind ever since you got your semblance and just create a minion for it. Again, absolutely no idea whether that would even work, but yeah.
Honestly, these pods are pretty primitive... but if you could translate souls to auras and auras to souls, shouldn't it be possible to just fill the holes in Amber's soul with a bunch of injected aura? Sure, she'd be kind of a chimera of herself and whomever donated aura to her, but as long as she regularly got more aura to sustain her full soul, she should be able to function, at least. Maybe even heal, in time.
"Okay, so I got good news and bad news. Good news, the situation isn't getting any worse, Amber's soul is stable as far as I can tell," you inform Ozpin and Glynda. "Bad news, she isn't going to recover by herself; whatever did this, it left direct damage to her soul, and it isn't healing. If she were to be healed somehow, the power of the Fall Maiden may or may not return to her in full, but I'd say that should be our first step either way."
"My best idea? Open up the pod for a few hours. My semblance allows me to infuse my aura into another person through my blood, and it usually heals old wounds of most kinds. I've never seen a case like this before, but it's worth a try, at least," you tell the two people you just followed into their creepy soul mutilation basement.
"Mhm... You will have to tell me, one of these days, what exactly your semblance is, Mister Livsey," Ozpin responds. "All the same, we do find ourselves short of better options, so we shall have to trust your intentions. Please, do not make me regret this."
Lot of sincerity in that one. "I'll do my best," you shrug at him as Ozpin goes to fiddle with what looks like the control panel of this whole apparatus. "Though I would bet someone is going to regret never putting any chairs anywhere soon enough, this does take several hours."
"I do prefer to stand, thank you very much."
And with that, and a quick motion of your claws, you have a steady, small stream of blood flowing over to Amber's mouth, carefully controlled to make sure she doesn't choke. "So... Any interesting news lately?"
You can already tell this will be a... challenging time.
"So, this was... an experience," Ozpin said once he was safely ensconced back in his office, a new cup of warm chocolate in his hands. "As you said, meeting Mister Livsey is somewhat of an interesting event for any occasion."
"As well as the easiest way to find out more about him, rather than keep on looking at the same footage for days." As always, his dear assistant minced no words. Not that he disagreed, of course.
"Alas, operational security does remain of the utmost priority," Ozpin bemoaned. "Even just being near him is a significant risk- certain voices questioned whether it was a wise move to even ask him to come to Beacon itself. Speaking of which, what did you think of his story?"
The Wizard Of Oz, hm? Too many fitting details for it to be a coincidence. Not to mention it put Leonardo into an entirely new light, if correct; he had been the one to protest direct interaction with Mister Livsey the hardest out of all of them.
"I think it was very much him knowing more than expected," Glynda confirmed his thoughts. "Exactly how he came upon some of this knowledge, and why he put it into the terms he did, I haven't the foggiest."
Humming to himself a little, Ozpin began to write the entire conversation down by hand verbatim, unwilling to trust his memory alone. "Perhaps we shall have to consider things a little. Certainly, the idea of melting our Wicked Witch of the West with simple water appeals to me, though I doubt it would be that easy. Perhaps it is another effect of his semblance?"
"Summoning, perception, empowerment, advance technology and now this? I sincerely doubt all of it can be lead back to a single semblance, Ozpin." The voice of reason, hm?
"It does not have to be. Need I remind you that Mister Livsey is living in a mansion with several young women to consort with? A semblance can be a marvellous thing trained to stunning depths, and not all of his displayed feats need originate from himself," Ozpin reasoned.
"A topic to discuss another time, then," Glynda allowed. "What would you say..."
"What he meant? Well, he was not wrong in describing me as just a common elderly man," he chuckled happily. "Not much else I am at this point. And the comparisons to the other headmasters are easy enough to draw. Similarly, them being sent off to rule the city, the people and the forest is a note of their level of control over the respective kingdom, if simplified as it must be for a fairy tale."
Glynda nodded. "Taking things literally, the one to defeat the Wicked Witch on the westmost continent would be 'Dorothy', but unless I am mistaken, we have no obvious candidates there. I do wonder what this means translated to our situation," she pondered aloud for a moment- "Regardless, seeking to fulfill a casually revealed prophecy of questionable validity would be a fool's errand, so we will simply have to keep our eyes open, I suppose."
"As you say, oh Wise Witch," Ozpin joked, looking his handwriting over. "Do feel free to question him about this topic as opportunities arise, of course, but don't feel the need to press the issue when you are otherwise preoccupied. You do seem quite smitten with him. And in the meantime, he has more than enough time to expand his own operations," he continued talking over his second-in-command's protests. "Now, let us see how our beloved students are doing, hm?"
Work as a headmaster never ceased, after all.
One good thing about spending most of your time sleeping while everyone else is doing their own thing is that both Sarah and Nora keep on eating people on the side, meaning you both grow in power by proxy through those deaths and they make sure to keep the bodies, gathering them in your basement before eventually teleporting them to Mount Glenn, where a freezer room has been assembled by Nora bossing your robots around just for this reason.
And yes, Sarah is the one that just keeps on throwing them into the corner and waiting for Nora to arrange the actual teleports, but it's not really a big thing either way.
What this means is that your undead steadily producing more biomass combined with these bodies is actually a significant boon to your ability to create massive undead meant to scout out and hunt down Grimm far afield, somewhat in preparation for later and somewhat because it amuses you and gives you something to look at while asleep, Though you figure there shouldn't be anything stopping you from telepathically taking control, either, so they're really more a very immersive gaming system at this point once you really put in the effort to make it work.
Either way, you'd best get to work on this stuff before Weiss gets bored of sniffing your bedcovers and starts to ask where you went.
One thing you've actually been thinking about for a while now, stitching together great masses of armor and muscle, only interspersed with teeth, claws and ion lasers, is that you have entire branches of necromancy as of yet greatly unexplored. What you mean are, of course, skeletons.
Experiments have shown that your ability to keep control over them is entirely seperate from that of control over your more fleshy servitors, though you sadly have to figure out a great many things about how to make them work from the ground up. Then again, that just means more fun to be had testing things out!
You wouldn't have expected it, but playing with corpses is unexpectedly entertaining.
In the end, you settle on a way to use your strengths to your advantage even as you maximize the use of your open capacity, focusing on simply making one body into as powerful a fighter as possible with some minimal technological assistance.
You would just give a bunch of skeletons some ion weaponry, but they're too dumb to really figure out the trigger, you tried it already.
So you went back to the drawing board... and you do have to say, you actually came up with something good. Normally, just sticking a skeleton into a suit of armor would be... questionable, at best- armor is meant for full people with stuff like muscles and flesh to wear, not for bare bones; it would rattle around and be of little real use, ultimately, as the kind of strikes that would really damage skeletons would connect just fine anyways.
So, what did you do? Obviously enough, you just designed armor specifically meant for this, being useable by your new boney minions and lined with shock-absorbent materials under the same stuff you use for your robots, just with a few aesthetic changes to the surface so their shared source isn't immediately apparent.
A few spikes here and there as well as some testing to make sure it isn't too heavy for the skeleton to move itself later, you simply go on ahead and give them a reliable set of weapons even your dumber undead are capable of using without issues.
Claws are wonderful that way.
Well, good news is, Weiss never got around to doing much of anything before just falling asleep, cuddled into your bed where Ruby actually joined her. According to your maid minion avatar, they talked about you for a long while before exhaustion overcame them, in fact.
So as it turned out, all you had to do is tuck Pyrrha to bed, the redhead having waited for you to come back from wherever you were entirely naked as the slime maids attended to her, together with Sarah (who also stripped down just because, best you could tell). A thorough, loving buttfuck later, only you and Sarah are left awake, Nora having gone out to grab a 'snack' earlier.
"So, Sarah, anything in particular I should do right now?" You ask, happily popping a freshly conjured piece of chocolate into your mouth. "Figure I should at least try to pull my weight every now and then."
Sarah snorts. "Happy to know you haven't just decided to hole up in Vale forever, Gabe, and yeah, there's a few things I could think of that may need an errand boy to take care of them."
And with that, she just opens her mouth, demanding to be fed from the little fruit bowl the slime maids got ready for you earlier, happily sucking on your fingers once you feed her a strawberry dipped in liquid chocolate.
Hey, say whatever you want, but you do know how to live the life.
"So," Sarah finally begins once she's had enough of tasting you (yes, that way, too), "there's this one teeny, tinsy bit of a problem that should probably be worked out over at Mount Glenn. Take a look at this."
Showing you her scroll, your sister plays some footage presumably taken from your very own cameras, newly installed all around Mount Glenn. On it, you can see these big, vaguely elephant-like Grimm all lined up, walking in front of one another perpendicularly to the abandoned settlement. "These, are known as goliaths. Big, nasty Grimm that're usually just waiting for an opening to strike rather than mindlessly attacking," Sarah explains. "They've been steadily moving closer to Mount Glenn, best I can tell, most likely because of our activity there. How about you make sure they never have the time to get any ideas?"
"So take out a group-forming, intelligent version of the murdermachines intent on wiping out all life, the kind that nobody wants to fight as long as they don't attack first because they're just too dangerous, got it," you nod, smiling and giving Sarah a kiss on the head. "Consider it done."
And with that, you're off to your teleporter, to move over right quick. Time for what might well be a serious fight, for once!
Well, here you are, standing on a roof of one of the outlying buildings making up the desolate ruins clustered around Mount Glenn. In the distance, you can see the big, elephantine Grimm as they... patrol, you would downright say, along the area.
They look even bigger than in the footage you got to see, standing an easy 20 feet tall if you don't count in the ears, slowly stomping their way through the wilderness. One of them actually seems to look at you, but turns its head away after a long moment.
Let's see how long that lasts, then. "From all a flower blooms, enveloping and tearing, proclaiming the end!"
Pointing at the foremost goliath, you watch as a sizeable arrangement of sharp ice petals blooms from underneath one of its rear legs, shredding and freezing straight through it and scattering black mist in all directions, culminating in its tip piercing the area where an animal might have its genitals.
The trumpeting screams of the beast echo throughout the plains, but you are a little too busy wondering why exactly that just happened. You... You were trying to hit one of the legs, which happened, but why-?
No matter, the goliaths have started rushing into your direction, likely having decided to attack anything human-shaped in sight. The one you hit, annoyingly enough, is in the lead, having torn the arrangement of ice you conjured to hurt it out of the ground and not letting the functional loss of a leg slow it down.
You should, probably, have expected as much, but these things are fucking tough, from the looks of it. Then again, they're essentially the size of buildings, so... Well.
You aren't exactly looking forwards to having to run around trying to avoid being trampled, so you'd best just keep those things over there, as opposed to where you are.
Luckily, you do have a few ways to accomplish this. First, you concentrate a bit, pointing at the ground before the charging leader of the goliaths, creating a swirling vortex of freezing cold winds and small chunks of ice.
Simultaneously, you chant away. "Let the grasp of winter coat all before me!"
An interesting effect you have noticed before, some of your spells tend to interact and synergize with other spells, powers or even plasmids. In this case, as a thick coating of slick ice spreads from your pre-placed ice cyclone trap, the spell covers a significantly wider area than it normally would, projecting a trip hazard onto the entire area in front of you.
You aren't exactly done, however. With the flip of a mental switch, your aura coalesces, a part of it twisted into a body to inhabit, and soon enough you have created one of your trusty bondage demons, the sultry woman already extending great lengths of chain from her already existing ones even before your call comes. "Trip 'em up!"
A wave of metal descends from next to you, crawling onto the ground from where she stands next to you on the roof, just as the lead goliath's front is bodily lifted up for just a moment, the cold wind and ice aggressively pushing it up before it manages to find its feet again... Only to have those same feet torn from under it, the slick ice and chains wrapping around them pulling away keeping it from finding its balance.
Looking over the field of battle, you can see each of the goliaths incapable of moving much, two of them outright falling on their sides with thunderous cracks as the ice coat underneath is smashed, the rest managing to avoid the same fate by aggressively fighting off the chains whenever they start to layer on. For a moment, the Bondage Demon keeping your enemies in check, you think this might just be easy, after all.
Then the cacophony from around you begins to sound, twisted animal screeches and otherworldly, guttural wordless utterances of hatred announcing the horde of Grimm fast approaching. The big fucks must've called in reinforcements with their earlier roars!
Channeling your aura into your minion so as to keep the waves of chains seeking to dislodge the goliaths coming in steady, you chant for another ice flower, noting with satisfaction that you succeeded in completely shredding both front legs of the one target you've been going at this entire time, though it just oozes some black mist onto its wounds, recovering the flesh somehow and continuing to tear at the bonds keeping it in place.
Right, this can't continue like this. There are too many too large Grimm calling in a tide of the smaller ones, you have to murder them faster somehow. Though you also don't want to actually risk yourself against an actual threat, even if you fear it might be inevitable for you to do so at this rate.
Truly, you do need more dakka.
In the meantime, though, you'd best just call this one in, you suppose. Hey Sarah, you got eyes on this?
Watching with Nora and recording for later, your sister smugly responds through your telepathic bond. You need anything?
It would be highly appreciated if you could be a dear and teleport a few robots in here, maybe a few turrets- this looks like it's going to be a harder fight than I thought, and if they are getting reinforcements, so am I.
Sure, sure, you big wuss, give me just a second...
It isn't long before your robots start appearing around you sporadically, opening fire on the biggest targets in sight while arranging themselves around the building you're standing on- they can 'hear' the Grimm just as well as you do, and have apparently decided to prepare to incercept and keep their backs free over helping you kill the goliaths.
Not that you can find it in you to disagree, though. With that thought in mind, you smack a few cyclone traps onto nearby walls and avenues of approach, hurriedly working at it.
You can see the nevermores circling the sky above you already.
Continuing to cast another ice coating onto the ground around the goliaths, refreshing the areas that got torn up in the struggle so far and laying it on a bit thicker everywhere else, hopefully serving to better stop the giant Grimm. You also keep on pumping out another cyclone trap placed smack-dab under the one you've been trying to kill this entire time, something that seems to actually make it even more livid.
With a trumpeting roar of defiance, it tears itself loose of the chains meant to keep it in place, which has you click your tongue and immediately summon another bondage demon, the added effort hopefully enough to stop the others, at least.
Your robots, on the other hand, have taken up positions, several turrets, a small score of Hammers and several SP1D3Rs opening fire on everything that moves.
Actually, looking around, you suddenly realize there's a chilly fog in the air, and some ice is starting to form here and there on some of the goliaths. Come to think of it, it is getting pretty cold, huh? You didn't even notice.
Either way, by the time the goliath has arrived before you, its head level with your own thanks to the building you're standing on, it is more limping than rushing, the hatred in its eyes just the same intensity as before the only clue as to this creature's condtion.
Wordlessly, you get into a stance, one foot forwards to let you reach it just right. Looking the goliath in the eyes, you simply smash a clawed fist fueled by your full strength and beyond straight between them, piercing through the bone-like facemask and smashing up anything beyond.
For a long moment, it stays standing like that, before you pull your arm out of its skull. The tremors from the enormous body slumping down and falling to the ground shake the ruins you're standing on, but it keeps standing, which is really all you need.
Now for the rest.
"A colder place!" The sheer amount of Nevermores up in the skies are kind of worrying you, so you combine the various cyclone traps you've been placing everywhere in sight with your spell to make it significantly colder than it would otherwise be, nearly unnoticeable little whirlwinds of cold air rising from each of them towards the sky you just turned into an area full of freezing cold winds and small clouds of snow being formed from air humidity.
Still, even while preparing for the incoming horde of tireless murdermonsters (Is this what people feel when they see you coming at them?), you can't exactly ignore the real reason you're here. Thus, you grow a second head, that of a wolf, out of your shoulder, snarling and glaring at the goliaths before settling on your next target.
Then, a solid beam of sheer cold comes blasting out of it, the sensation similar to breathing out but not actually requiring you to do so, contrary to the simple waves of cold you can also do. Keeping your aim steady on one of the building-sized Grimm, you freeze its left flank over, the temperature in the entire area before you dropping steadily and visibly hindering the other goliaths as well.
Your robots, more and more of them being teleported in, are steadily assembling fighting ranks, manning street corners and rooftops as they array themselves around and near SP1D3Rs and K33-PR turrets, preparing to meet any charging Grimm with massed fire even as those of them with sightlines towards the goliaths support your own fire.
Your bondage demons are doing good work, but they're consuming quite a lot of aura as it goes, too, and before you can do anything more, it feels as though a dam has been broken, and a flood of black bodies almost thick enough to completely cover the ground rushes at your position, beowolves, boarbatusks and ursae only interruped by the occasional deathstalker or taijitu swarming from all directions.
The ones coming from the front aren't the issue, delayed a healthy bit by the massive ice and simply freezing solid here and there, but enough are approaching from everywhere else it's still an issue, your robot army opening fire on all fronts. At the very least the solid black sky made up of nevermores upon nevermores, ranging from the size of a grown person to about half a goliath's length, have trouble approaching, the steadily lowering temperature making it hard to fly above you due to wings simple breaking as they freeze solid.
Also, the sight of Grimm just being thrown up into the air, half-frozen and riddled with disintegrated holes, is immensely amusing.
Keeping up your barrage of sheer cold for the time being, your added head actually starting freeze over its own fur (it actually feels nice, funnily enough) just by generating this much cold even as you once again begin to chant. "From all a flower blooms, enveloping and tearing, proclaiming the end!"
You think you're getting the hang of aiming these things, actually, angling your latest flower of clear ice petals to tear through a leg, then the stomach of the next goliath you've been aiming to eliminate, the 'bloom' of its creation perpetuating itself upwards for a long moment and completely shredding everything it meets from the inside out.
It's honestly a shame that Grimm mist just dissipitates like it does; you'd imagine if it could be caught in ice the way blood would be, it'd look amazing.
Taking a couple seconds to refuel your demons, you take a quick look around, noting the tide of Grimm all around is starting to make it past your robots- while many are fighting and destroying each other in what is turning into a massive deathmatch your robots are winning for now, the ion lasers proving to be too lethal for their enemies to endure for any length of time even as simple weight of numbers lets them push forwards, turning the fights into dozens of melees they have better chances in, boarbatusks especially just spinning themselves into little deathballs ramming into any robots too slow to shoot them down.
The blades hidden in your Hammers' arms let them fight back and kill more than a few Grimm before being destroyed, the effects of their ability to learn from each other obvious, while the SP1D3Rs simply stride around the battlefield, relying on their mass and armor to ignore and just trample smaller enemies thanks to the deadly application of their spiked legs even as disintegrating miniguns and shoulder-mounted grenade launchers cause massive devastation wherever they turn.
Some are damaged or even taken down, but that takes massive enemy saturation and/or larger Grimm to accomplish, the odd ursa major you spy the least it requires to seriously bother them, especially while other robots in the area are raining down fire. It is mostly deathstalkers and taijitu that force them to concentrate on them.
Still, despite the unceasing wall of firepower that is your magnificent robot army, several faster Grimm are slipping through the cracks, and some are smart enough to try and aim for you.
Luckily enough, you do have a trio of SP1D3Rs set up to guard yourself at this point, and a few more cyclone traps catapult the Grimm in question upwards as you set them under them with pinpoint accuracy, the briefly airborne enemies turned into the best equivalent of swiss cheese by your honor guard.
Just then, though, one of the goliaths manages to break free, nearly laying itself out on the ice, but successfully gliding on it for a bit instead, coming right at you again with the same hateful glint in its eyes as all the other Grimm around, annoyingly enough.
Okay, fuck this, you clearly need to get the big guns out. Or, in this case, the big wood. Concentrating a little, you draw upon the one Guardian within your soul you have had the longest, despite never so much as exchanging a word with it.
Considering the Tree isn't the most talkative of beings, that shouldn't be too surprising.
Breathing out a massive cloud of silver mist, black spots dancing wildly within it, you take just a moment to push one of your Big Red Buttons, a massive tree is soon standing next to your building, a writhing mass of roots and fleshy organs at its lower end for a long moment, before it whirrs into motion, wood harder than any metal you care to compare it to shredding into the ground to secure the big, slowly beating heart at the root of it all.
The tree is slow and ponderous, but it is part of you, and it knows what to consider enemies and what not. Within moments, hundreds of roots dig through the earth, pushing into Grimm just as easily as they did through concrete or whatever despicable dust concoction people use on Remnant.
That's that front taken care off... but undortunately, the big guy in front of you is still going strong, charging right at you!
WIth the tree on Grimm duty and your robots supporting it (it's really just tearing through them, phew), you turn back on your part in this fight, the SP1D3Rs around you making sure nothing makes it into or on the building you've decided to use for this.
A quick telepathic conversation with Sarah has you hold a bit of civilian-grade ice dust, the vile crystalline substance crushed in your hands as you push it into your bondage demons, the sultry women moaning and exhaling clouds of mist as a wave of frost creeps along the wave of chains extending from them, covering the bound goliaths and aggressively eating into their black flesh.
Casting another Ice Flower right into the currently charging goliath, the one you've been aiming for so far just slumping down and beginning to (slowly, but finally) disintegrate at this point, you change targets with the ice beam your shoulder wolf head is still emitting, tearing and freezing through the one potentially dangerous enemy left.
At your back, the fighting is coming to somewhat of a sluggish standstill; though the Grimm continue throwing themselves into the meat grinder still, your robot army, shuffled around through teleportation no doubt thanks to Sarah, can keep them in check with the sheer amount of them being chunked by your Tree.
The goliath, though, is still charging at you, seemingly determined to trample your position no matter what, despite the sheer amount of ice and cold shredding and freezing it from all directions, courtesy of your plasmid now thrown into the mix as you don't need it for the Grimm anymore. Just before it arrives at your position, though, a nevermore, the largest you've seen yet, dives overhead, angled precisely to fire a series of pinion missiles at you as its wings beat against the freezing air, even while slowly falling out of the sky as it freezes over.
The fucking thing is sacrificing itself to try and land an attack on you!
Well as you liked to tell Sarah growing up, sometimes the only way out is through.
Not through the charging goliath, of course, because fuck that, but instead you turn your gaze upwards.
Crouching down low for a short moment, you jump, assisted by your numerous enhancements, aura chief amongst them, rocketting upwards in short order. Your target, not entirely retarded, attempts to dodge, swerving to the side so as to keep you in its sighst and maybe nail you with a few feathers, after all, but you just jump again, off of thin air, right into its path.
You nail one of your arms through its throat, impacting at just the right angle to get a good hit in, your second forearm soon joining the first in its birdlike chest.
When you tear them out, the stakedrivers extended before clacking back into ready position, the nevermore falls, even as, below you, the goliath you just very thoroughly avoided impacts the building you'd been standing on this entire time, attempting to smack the demon minions you left there away.
They answer by expending most of their aura to lash it with chains, concentrated fire by the trio of SP1D3Rs and a couple roots from the tree growing through the thing giving it the rest.
You, on the other hand, remain in the sky, the flocks of nevermores further out rabidly attempting to come flying at you only to freeze before ever coming close. A few of the smarter (and larger) ones still keep their distance as you swing yourself around the neck of the now dissolving corpse, though, and take a moment to survey the battlefield.
... Come to think of it, that was really fucking epic just now, wasn't it?
Elsewhere, in a certain mansion inside Vale, a certain room full of screens showing live footage also being recorded was filled with voices.
"WOOO! YOU GO, GABE!" A certain little sister cheered, stuffing popcorn into her mouth. "SHOW 'EM WHO'S BOSS!"
"Nice jump there, wonder how he did it," A certain Nora agreed, sharing the same snackfood.
"... Mhm." A certain Okita was being an Okita, chewing on a whole chocolate bar before taking it out for a moment. "Looks fun."
Suffice to say, a lot of sweets were consumed this day as live commentary was added and edited footage was being put together into compilations in short order.
Well, now that you're here already, you may as well stay in the sky. You kind of like it up here, and, more importantly, none of those goliaths can come to try and stomp on you.
Whirling around, you kick down on the nevermore, the falling body accelerating just as you negate gravity for yourself, floating (mostly) in place, a few uses of telekinesis keeping you steady in short order while it impact the ground, crushing a couple more Grimm and delaying a particularly large deathstalker for a moment.
The fight actually seems to be going well, now that you take a second to survey the battlefield, your robots clearly slowly, but surely gaining the upper hand regardless of the infinite amounts of enemies coming in.
The destroyed robots are actually starting to be teleported away, being replayed by fresh troops. Hey, for all that your factory's been in full production mode for less than a week, it's actually doing some really nice work.
When Salem had heard of this new factor in play from Lionheart, she had resolved herself to put him on her list- he would be either recruited or dead soon enough, depending on Cinder's report and when Tyrian would arrive at her palace again.
Mount Glenn would have to be destroyed one way or another, of course, the humans could not be allowed to have the hope such an effort would bring- but a determined Grimm attack would prove enough to ensure Ozpin ceased his useless attempts at sneaking facilities into the area.
And of course, just as she was sitting down for her daily tea party with herself, she felt one of the larger Grimm she set to patrol Mount Glenn in preparation for punishing Ozpin's latest scheme die.
It was not proper for a Queen to sigh, so Salem did not as she willed the Seer in her tea chamber towards herself. She had a call to make, as the young people called it these days.
The cleanup after the battle, for all that it is much less tense and dangerous, takes the majority of the time, the Grimm coming in not reinforced as thoroughly, but still dragging more of their kind into the meatgrinder by simple momentum.
Still, there's not much these random Grimm can really do about your robots, and though your tree fades after, what, half an hour, its work has already been done, the worst of the flood blunted through unceasing smashing, stabbing and general root-related violence.
By the time Sarah teleports you back to the mansion, the night is pretty much over, and you're mostly annoyed at just how big a thing all of this has become.
Only to be confronted by Sarah butt.
Tilting your head at Sarah bent over a chair in the room you find yourself, one of the control rooms Sarah out together if you recall correctly, you just step forward and grope it. "Not that I'm not happy, but what's the occasion?" Normally, Sarah at least pretends she's there for something else when she wants sex.
"The conquering hero gets a reward," she simply states, wiggling a little in most pleasing ways.
"Well, when you put it like that..."
'When Jake woke up that night, it was not to the usual dreams he was expecting, or even nightmares about being chased through the woods he was growing used to that woke him. Instead, it was a strange feeling, almost as if-
"Bella?" He asked, blearily opening his eyes to see her standing over him. "What-?"
It was all he could do to get this far, her weirdly cold, but gentle hand on his member he just then realized was revealed as the bedcovers and his sleepwear pants had been dragged to the side quite distracting. She had to have been at this for a while, too, judging by the clear precum already staining the thumb massaging his tip.
"Shh," she shushed him, not unkindly. "Just relax."
Jake was shaken. Why was she in his room? How had she gotten inside the house in the first place? Why was she-
It was all he could do to bite his teeth when Bella redoubled her efforts, her hand a blur around his cock, pressing down and just...
Jake came before he could stop himself, his seed spilling out into the cool night air only to be caught in her palm. Smiling her weird little smile that always got his heart fluttering just a little, Bella used her other hand to pat his head before covering him up again.
"You're cute when you sleep."
Bella left idly licking her hand, and Jake, sleepy as he was, had no nightmares to speak of.'
There. People like this kinda shit, right? You had to improvise a little, but it's not like that exact thing didn't more or less happen to you in kindergarten.
Attending breakfast is easy enough to do after all the fighting you just got out of, and keeping an eye on Ruby is perfectly doable as everyone in the mansion that really needs to is in attendance.
Of course, the topic of conversation was centered around something Gabriel honestly didn't have the slightest care in the world for, but hey, he could make do.
"And I read they're still looking into where the 'Grimm Tide To nowehere' went!" Ruby exlaimed excitedly, waving her scroll while her other hand was busy fending off Nora's fork with her own in protection of her pancakes.
"Several teams of huntsmen should have been sent out already, so I'm sure official word on the matter will be out sooner or later." Really, Weiss is just far too optimistic about things, especially when you actually went out of your way to send a message to whoever takes over secretarial duties for the Ozluminati that 'the situation was totally under control and has been resolved with the deaths of the Grimm involved'.
You didn't exactly tell them you basically went and poked a bunch of goliaths because they came too close to your proverbial picket fence before brutalizing literally all the Grimm within several miles in the resulting battle, but hey, less Grimm is a net positive, right? Right.
Anyways, it's a bit of a chore, but you eventually get through morning conversations between teenagers half of whom are decidedly not morning people and manage to talk to Ruby alone before she darts off to your workshop.
"Say, Ruby," you begin, having the shorter girl turn around to regard you with a tilt of her head, "did I ever tell you about my side business as a faunus rights activist?"
Ruby taps a finger to her lips before answering, obviously deeply thinking about it. "I think Yang mentioned once how you said something like that to her, but I don't really know much. Why're you asking?"
"I wanted to get you a free lifetime membership on the site I use," you explain, scroll already to hand. "Just a moment..."
Receiving your message and the link you sent with it, Ruby blinks as she taps along.
Then she keeps on blinking. Then she blushes. Then she taps some more.
"As you can see, OnlyFauns is the originator of the first and only interracial-orientated porn site on Remnant. We were actually a little surprised just how many faunus were happy with the idea at first, to the point we had to hold auditions to sort candidates. I also star in a few videos, by the way," you tell her about your 'activist activities.' "I wanted to ask if you wanted to tour the studio later today during a shoot I'm going to participate in... maybe even play a role yourself? We're pretty spontaneous around there."
You wait for an answer, expectantly looking at Ruby... but she just stands there, staring at her screen. Coming around to her other side, you see she's fixated on a video of you sitting on a park bench with a pair of nearly identical wolf twin faunus, one to each side, making out with both of them as they lewdly masturbate your erect dong, all hands busy groping someone somehow.
As you happen to know, the entire series of clips Ruby is about to watch are about a world where casual nudity and sex in public just suddenly became commonplace, detailing everyone's descent into nonstop orgies in any place you could think of. Production was actually surprisingly easy, all things told. One of your favorite parts was where you and them actually went to some hot springs later on, one of the places in Vale rented out for an afternoon for all the clips Sarah wanted to film in an environment like that.
The twins are actually extremely into playing with each other along with others. Felt like bona-fide sexual predators, despite how cute and innocent they look at first glance.
"Ruby? Ruby, can you hear me?" The only response to your question is a deepend blush and a shake of her head, Ruby's silver eyes still locked onto her scroll. Ah well then.
"Okay, in that case, just have fun, okay?" She nods, subconsciously.
Messing up her hair a bit while you rub her head, you eventually decide to just leave her to it, instead seeking out Nora to talk about baby names a little.
The important questions in life deserve to be asked repeatedly and all that.
By the time you're done discussing and joking around with Nora and back to see how Ruby has been doing, one of your slime maids stationed nearby just in case Ruby happens to have an aneurysm due to excessive blushing, she seems to have passed the bathhouse scene already, now getting to the hotel lobby filled with horny women all making out with each other half-naked in the background as the main 'protagonists' book a room, incidentally each giving both of the receptionist's breasts a quick suck and a kiss by way of a greeting.
"Hey Ruby, you lucid again?"
"Bwah?!" Realizing what she's been doing, with one hand playing around with her skirt completely without her conscious input, Ruby hides her scroll behind her back. "Gabriel! Since when did- I mean, how long-"
"Don't worry, no need to hide. I literally acted in that porno," you point out. "As for how long, I think it's been around half an hour since I left you on your sudden fixation?"
"I'm not fixated!" Ruby insists. "I'm just... appreciative."
You pat her head, smirking. "Sure you are. Anyways, I wanted to ask if you'd like to get a little bit of an extra boost before going back to Beacon. I cleared it up with the headmaster, too, but how it works is that I can actually use my semblance in a lot of ways, and by infusing some of my power into others, I can give them a little extra strength. Less sleep requirements, a mini-semblance of sorts, the works. Would you like me to do that? It just takes a while to work, and it needs to be refreshed regularly, but we're talking about weeks and months here, so it isn't really that bad."
"Sure, Gabriel, I'd love to have some of your power in me." Ruby blushes again, sneakily fiddling with her scroll.
"Yes, you can go ahead and watch porn of me while we do this, I don't mind," you smile indulgently.
And with that, you draw a thin line along your wrist, pushing your blood along with your hemokinesis to allow Ruby to drink it. She's freaked out by the sudden blood, of course (makes sense considering what it means for a huntsman to actually shed blood), but you get her over that easily enough.
Running as fast as she can in a tight circle, Ruby, in her new canine form, seems quite happy with what she got, even when she eventually just stops.
"Zwei always seems so happy about doing this, but it's just really stupid!" She laughs with her snout, stretching it out to receive chin scratches from you.
"I know, right? It's really weird why some dogs do that," you agree.
Ruby looks up at you, askance. "Wait, I'm ruffling. How can you understand me?"
"What can I say, I'm one cunning linguist." And with that, you swiftly turn into a wolf yourself, the process just about instant as opposed to Ruby's one minute of concentration. Licking one of her ears, you proceed to groom the girl properly.
"Wait, wait! Stooopp!" But you have no mercy. Nipping the tip of the appendage you're licking on after a long moment, you dart off, running away.
"You're it!" Ruby will never catch you!
Note to self, Ruby's semblance can be used while transformed, and is highly unfair. Your retaliation of using the maids stationed around the mansion was entirely appropriate.
As was licking her entire face and giving her snout doggy kisses. With all the tongue.
Weiss really is into the whole being a classy young lady. Probably a mix of being educated as one and wanting to uphold the image, if you had to name a reason for why she seems so perpetually enarmored with tea parties, singing on a stage and poking Ruby's nose whenever she misbehaves.
And studying a lot, of course, can't forget that. If there's one thing her letters to you mentioned a lot, studying was it.
One way or another, it isn't hard to talk her into having tea with you, sitting with her and comfortably chatting. You get the feeling Weiss just... never really did this kind of thing. Sitting down for simple, casual small talk with people she's close to. Just like yourself before your siblings were born.
Naturally, you waste no time getting to know more about her family situation. You already knew she wasn't particularly close with her parents, of course, but as it turns out the literally only person that she could easily talk to was the family butler, Klein. She mentions her sister as someone she's close and looks up to, but... you doubt it, personally.
Something to keep an eye out on.
Still, to get to this next bit...
"Actually, all this talk reminds me," you bluntly change topics, "I've cleared up a particular use of my semblance with Headmaster Ozpin, and already used it for Ruby."
You give her the same spiel you gave the redheaded team leader, Weiss' eyes growing wide for a moment before she forcefully return them to normal and plays with her hair. Still self-conscious about her scar?
"Why, Gabriel, I would love to receive a measure of your semblance. It really is quite astounding how many uses it has, is it not?" She agrees before asking.
Well, you can't exactly disagree on that.
Bearing a white owl on one hand, Weiss' transformed self happily snuggling up to you even as Ruby, who finally found you again, looks up at you begging for cuddles, you can't help but wonder if you're somehow making a mistake in giving everyone the power to turn into animals.
... Nah.
Pyrrha, being who she is, happily agrees when you ask her if she'd like to come have some tea with you, already having been naked while she still can over the weekend and just coming along with you.
Of course, while this is perfectly normal for her (she mentioned liking the sense of freedom she's associating with your mansion now), what is somewhat less normal are the animals waiting in Weiss' tea room, the wolf and the owl uncharacteristically still.
"Oh, What might you two be doing here?" Pyrrha asks as she comes inside, curiously stretching out a hand for Ruby to sniff at.
You can't just not take that one, of course. "Oh, this beautiful girl is Ruby, and the majestic bird up here is Weiss. Say hello, girls!"
A hoot and a wuffle later, you have a very confused Pyrrha on your hands, at least until both of them transform back, the return to 'standard' form always being faster and easier at first. "Surprise!" Ruby calls out, Weiss just shaking her head and sitting down to have a sip of her tea.
"Ruby? Weiss? What is going on?" Pyrrha asks the operative question.
"Gabriel used his semblance on us directly," your white-haired lover explains, patting Ruby's seat to have her join herself. "As you can see, this is capable of imbuing others with entirely new semblance-like powers that do not even consume aura... along with other advantages. Minor increases in speed and strength, and I haven't felt this clear-headed in ages."
"I was actually going to ask if you would like the same," you confess to Pyrrha, rubbing her butt in that way that always calms her down. "No reason not to get every advantage possible, after all."
"I would be honored, Gabriel, but... wouldn't that be cheating?" Pyrrha asks, now sitting down herself. Right, she did come from a tournament fighting background, didn't she?
"Pyrrha, you're going to be a huntress," Ruby, surprisingly, says. "There are no rules nor regulations, all that counts is making sure you protect the people you're there to protect. So long as it doesn't negatively affect yourself in the long run, there is no cheating, only an advantage."
"You're right," Pyrrha says, already having had the same epiphany as Ruby. "I'm sorry, I'm just so used to... it doesn't matter, now. Very well, how do we... GABRIEL!"
Seriously, people in this dimension react so strongly whenever some blood is spilt.
"This is..." Pyrrha mumbles, sparks of electricity dancing on her open palm. "Amazing," she concludes. "Limited somehow in how often I can use it, but still... and everything feels... so much clearer now."
"I'm glad you're taking to this so well," Weiss interjects, coming over in a blur of motion thanks to her newly gained powers. "I wouldn't know what to do if you didn't."
Right, she had that whole thing about Pyrrha officially being a friend of hers, didn't she? The two give each other a brief hug, still nearly completely naked except for hair decorations.
"I think they like each other very much," Ruby whispers to you from where you're still sitting, looking almost giddy about it.
"I would agree on that one, if nothing else," you drily agree. "Anyways, it's getting just a little late, so you girls had better put on some clothes and collect your teammates before you return to Beacon. Make sure to train your new powers if you want to get better with them, of course, especially if you want to use them in places where ending up naked all the time may be bothersome."
"Oh no," Ruby deadpans in response as Pyrrha and Weiss look over towards you, "I feel a sudden inability to dress myself. Whatever shall you do, Gabriel?"
"Not what I'd like to, Ruby, be assured," you smile at her quickly disappointed-looking perhaps now literal puppy dog eyes, "because while I'd love to 'help' you out, I have a thing I need to get to, sadly enough. An activist thing, you can ask Ruby for details if you're curious," you excuse yourself, sauntering right out the door. "Have fun helping Ruby, girls!"
The muffled protests and laughter coming through the door once you close it are as music in your ears.
OnlyFauns, your very own little porn network, has been steadily growing thanks to Sarah's occasional work on it whenever she didn't feel like doing anything more important, resulting in an, in her words, 'disturbingly successful and popular load of porn'.
You told her people would like it.
Anyways, an early injection of cash from your other ventures, aka the money you gave to Sarah after your artistic activities she then began to invest into anything she didn't subsequently ruin to buy up cheaper, meant that OnlyFauns could afford to buy an actual building filled to the brim with studios, changing rooms, props, filming sets and a bunch of technicians editing and modifying footage to produce completed porn. It is this place you are arriving at after a short drive, giving the accompanying driver Sarah hired on for occasions just like this a nod before entering.
The receptionist on duty, a nice brunette human woman this time, easily gets you the room numbers you need, and meeting none other than Blake Belladonna, known within these walls as only NinjaKitten, one of OnlyFaun's bigger stars after the receptions of her earlier appearance following your first batch of introductory clips.
And currently being surprisingly grumpy about it.
"I'm only doing this for the money, okay?" She clarifies as you meet her in the elevator, never quite looking straight at you as her cat ears twitch.
You just shrug in response. "Of course, that's a perfectly valid reason to make porn. I personally think you wouldn't be this good if you didn't enjoy it, but hey, to each their own."
Blake, giving off a low hiss for a moment, harrumphs and crosses her arms. "Whatever you say."
You just chuckle at her antics as the doors open, admitting both of you to the floor your set is being checked over one last time right now.
"The hidden village of Nin-Nin-Nopolis was, as always, preparing. Each of its ninja inhabitants was training themselves, man or woman, young or old, for the next mission, the next infiltrator, the next war. As they had always done."
The camera pans around the scene, establishing a bunch of people busily walking about thanks to some very good programs that will add things in the after-production, already being worked on a floor below you. Giving the viewer a moment to take this all in, it then zooms into one of the sizeable buildings' courtyard, set up very much like an outdoors dojo.
"It is here that we see our protagonist, NinjaKitten, sparring with one of her instructors," you continue narrating, the camera swerving all over said 'instructor', an actually somewhat skilled ferret faunus that was really into this scenario when approached with it.
"Come on, is this everything you have? You may as well just lie down and let the barbarians ravish you, at this rate!" She calls out as she takes Blake into a chokehold, the cat faunus making a show of struggling.
"Never! I will-"
"Only serve to breed more of them! If you won't, then prove it!" In a bit of semi-realistic wrestling, the two wind their bodies around each other, lasciviously groping one another under the pretense of sparring.
A few more barbs and one-liners are traded, NinjaKitten ends up with her face stuck between her 'instructor's' thighs, some 'accidental' nudity, all according to the script.
The story continues a bit, showing off a bit about NinjaKitten's backstory about a former princess embarking on a journey to become a ninja against her father's wishes, yadda yadda, you already went through this once. In her free time, she has to 'volunteer' in the local 'temple', aka the place you did her introductory video in.
The real meat of the story, though, begins when 'night' falls, the music you know is being spliced in right now swerving from peaceful/industrious to subtly threatening and foreboding.
"However, unknown to the residents of Nin-Nin-Nopolis, the plundering army of barbarians intent on ravaging the land and all within it had found its location through enhanced interrogation techniques applied onto the village's forwards scouts already, planning a dastardly attack in the coming morning to take advantage of its guards' tiring after long nights of keeping watch."
All of a sudden, shouts and screams can be heard in the background, the program swiftly adding a rolling overview of a surprise attack at the gates. On a cliffside not far from it, framed by dramatic dust emanations, you stand, posing appropriately, dressed up as a barbarian warlord and completely unrecognizable as the same guy that did the first video NinjaKitten appeared in.
"But what else was to be expected," you say, the narrator's voice for the first time discernable as your own through the movement of your mouth, "when battle-hardened veterans arrive for glorious combat against the cowardly ninja of the village? Hahahah!"
'Jumping down' from the cliff (really just overlaying the pre-filmed motion), you disappear into the chaotic melee. The scene, on the other hand, changes, showing none other than NinjaKitten sleeping in her traditional Mistralian bedroom... only to be woken up by a bunny faunus with pink hair hurriedly opening the door, the character introduced as GummiBunny earlier.
"Wake up! Enemy attack! Enemy attack!" Jumping to the side, she 'dodges' an 'axe', really just more CGI, but she plays the part well enough, flying at her, 'impacting' right before NinjaKitten's head.
"How did they find us?" She hisses. "No, no matter. We have to fight!"
That bit of monologue taken care of (Blake already had enough dialogue during her backstory establishment phase, really), she darts outside, the bunny ninja nowhere in sight. Realizing only too late she forgot to dress herself, she picks up a spear embedded in the ground, using it to charge the nearest group of enemies, who just so happen to be coming around the corner.
They are of course also just computer generated, but Remnant's tech lets everything look real enough, you're making sure of that later.
What follows is more of the same, half-animated battles for about two minutes, NinjaKitten dealing out and taking quite a beating, all with 'everyone' having aura, of course. All while NinjaKitten is completely naked, of course.
The scene changes, then, when NinjaKitten comes upon you, rings of defeated ninjas scattering the village square you have 'conquered', the pink-haired faunus ninja from earlier pushed against a wall as you take her from behind, one hand on her bunny ears as the other lifts one of her legs, giving the camera a good view of where your cock is drilling into her (pleasantly hot and tight) pussy. This isn't the first time you're doing this, obviously, as your sperm already covers much of her head- and it's your actual loads, by the way, after a quickie while everything else was going on.
This one faunus in particular has a real thing for rape play, which was why she basically jumped on this whole thing.
Her shivering body, obviously incapable of keeping up much longer, soon collapses, whereupon you simply grunt and continue to fill her for one last time before dropping her unceremoniously (onto some very soft padding, of course). Turning around, you fixate the stunned NinjaKitten, your still hard and fluid-covered cock angrily bobbing towards her as you begin walking towards her.
"What's this, another slut begging for a real cock? Not to worry, I can provide." Lifting a guan-dao (basically a lance whose tip has been replaced by a curved sword) out of the ground where you 'left it', you take a stance. "Come at me!"
"HUAAAAAH!" NinjaKitten charges at you, her own weapon on the ready.
Then both of you stop, the scene over and the cameras going to be cut at this point. "Okay, so next off, we have to-" Blake begins, only to be interrupted by you.
"Yes, get next door for the next part. I hope you like the collar, I picked it out myself."
"That's... really racist, I think," Blake doubtfully puts out there.
"It's not racist, it's attention to detail," you sniff. "You okay back there, GummiBunny?"
"Feeling great, actually, I think I came twice," she answers. Good enough for you, really.
The next thing the viewers see is an unconscious NinjaKitten slumping in chains, now wearing an easily visible collar and nothing else.
The camera 'blinks' awake, mirroring NinjaKitten's gradual 'return to awareness' as rhythmic wet sounds echo from nearby. 'Awakening' fully, she jerks up, held back by the chains keeping her in place (she could tear free at any point, of course).
The camera pans out, revealing she is held inside one of Nin-Nin-Nopolis' many buildings. Held to the walls, it is all she can do to watch what is going on in front of her.
"MuscleBustle-Sensei! What did you do to her?!" Indeed, kneeling at the Warlord's feet with her mask lowered, the instructor from earlier is blushing and covering her face as she fellates his cock, slurping and gulping in heavy motion.
"Who, me? I did nothing to her, be assured. The opposite, in fact." Grabbing onto her white hair, you pull her onto your entire length, MuscleBustle's throat constricting around you as she glucks and coughs at the sudden deepthroat. "This one went as far as being my willing toy in exchange for the remaining villagers' safety. Am I not a benevolent conqueror?"
With your best self-satisfied, glaringly smug smirk, you come, having timed yourself just for this. "You will never get away with this! The clans will-"
"The clans will celebrate Nin-Nin-Nopolis' fall," you plainly state, knowing MuscleBustle has to repress a snicker by the way she lightly chortles on your rod, though it really only adds to the scene as is. You yourself can only keep a straight face thanks to your perfect self control at any rate. "They will happily write it off as your clan's own mistakes and carelessness, from Ninstral to NinVale, as they will for any other hidden village until it is too late. The ninja nations of Shinobia are too divided to unite against any threat, even the one that shall conquer them all once I, Mighty Temu-Nin, have gathered the four Balls Of Power!"
"You're insane!" NinjaKitten appealed from where she knelt. "You will be stopped, you must be! The Balls Of Power must never be combined, else calamity will befall us all!"
"Tell that to the fools that have died in vain to protect them generation after generation, I am sure they will be pleased with your empty words!" You sneer disdainfully. "Get up, toy, to show her what awaits all that oppose me!"
Slowly waddling backwards to remove your length from your mouth, MusceBustle readjusts her mask, hiding the cum smearing her lips and leaking out of the corners of her mouth. Slowly, she takes off what little other clothes she is wearing, showing all she has in terms of underwear are a couple heart-shaped pasties on her nipples and clitoris.
And a buttplug tail.
"What is that?" NinjaKitten asks, aghast. "What unnatural-"
"As a sign of submission before Mighty Temu-Nin's rule, all without a tail are to receive an irremovable one," MuscleBustle's rough voice monotones. "They clean themselves and are to serve as a reminder of our station eternal."
"That's right, toy," you drawl, drawing a small box from nearby where you'd left it as part of the background until now. "And now guess who is to put this on whom."
Opening the black box you hold out for her with shivering hands, MuscleBustle reveals nothing else than a cat tail buttplug resting on red satin, menacing music playing in the background. It'll be properly added to the video later, of course, this is just to set the mood.
"No!" Fighting against her chains, NinjaKitten begs her former teacher. "Please! Please don't!"
But all is for naught as, under your imperious gaze, MuscleBustle comes for Ninjakitten, roughly keeping her in place with an iron grip on one cheek, revealing her asshole for the camera behind her before setting the buttplug into place. "Just hold still and relax," she whispers quietly, "no other way."
"Nhuoooo!" Biting her teeth at the sensation, the (actaully fairly well lubricated) intrusion into her backdoor leaves NinjaKitten writhing in a mix of 'pain' and pleasure.
Muscle Bustle, returning to your side, looks on at her former student with an unreadable expression. You, however, simply put a hand between her shoulderblades, bending her over in a blunt motion and stepping behind her.
"As your new God-King, I gracefully allow you to share your pleasure with each other. What do you have to say to this, toy?" You ask, lining yourself up with her sopping wet entrance.
"Thank you for your beneficience, Temu-Nin-sama," MuscleBustle chokes out before moaning at the lengthy penetration you subject her to.
"That's right, slut! You will be fucked, and you will thank me for it!" Immediately railing into her, you begin what ends up being a solid thirty minutes of nonstop sex, fucking her in several positions and forcing NinjaKitten to clean you up every time you fill her up, culminating in her making out with said 'student' while being fucked and simply falling to the floor, followed by a similar exertion for your prisoner.
NinjaKitten, for her part, tries her best to hold on, whether you press her against the wall or adjust the chains to leave her suspended in the air to easier rail her silly, even stretching her asshole to press your cock into it along with her new 'tail' (aura deals with any issues, no worries), but you are literally insatiable, and despite her begging and pleading never once let up.
One last 'unwilling' orgasm fucked into her simply has her eyes roll back while her limbs cramp up before, explosively, releasing, slumping in the chains as you roar a last orgasm out yourself, pumping just the same amount of semen right against her womb as you do every time.
Releasing her, you consider you just might have overdone it, after all; both MuscleBustle and NinjaKitten are literally overflowing with your seed, their tight pussies only improved by an athletic lifestyle.
Ah well, the show must go on!
"Hah! Both have given out. I shall have to sate my lusts on the villagefolk, after all!" And like that, you strut off screen, still erect penis bobbing with every step. Once gone, you go ahead and grab a glass of water from the refreshments table just for show, leaving a trail of body fluids all along.
"Now we'll just have to wait until they wake up," you tell the camera team, the collection of both male and female faunus and humans staring at you for some reason.
"Is that, uh, is that normal?" One of them asks. "The fainting, I mean."
"Pretty much," you shrug. "Haven't really found anyone that can keep up with me, even people with enough aura to be top-tier huntsmen. It's a work in progress. So, what're you guys doing tonight?"
"At the end of the day," you narrate again, the cameras showing a view of the 'destroyed' village, "in the face of power, some cower away," a shot of MuscleBustle sitting with both wrists chained to the wall, wearing a little suit to make her look pregnant (some image editing later will make it look real enough).
"Some choose to be destroyed," quick shot of a graveyard, "some pretend nothing is happening," a pan over several villagers, none of them without a tail and some in obvious discomfort as they go about their daily lives, "and some... some choose to run, fleeing in terror or misguided delusions."
Back at the same cliffside you first 'appeared' on, NinjaKitten is climbing up, turning around to look at the devastated village of Nin-Nin-Nopolis. At her back, her new tail can be seen, and she briefly winces to show she certainly hasn't forgotten about it, having trouble staying on her legs for a moment.
"What matters is not only what we do, but why we do it... and I, for one, certainly have an idea of what I am doing." Swinging back to a view of yourself, naked and soiled with fluids as a small hill of sweaty naked women is going to be rendered into the backgroud later, you grin. "In the pursuit of power... what can truly matter? What can be allowed to matter? I have found my answer, and none shall stop me when I reach for the world."
And that's that, the whole thing is over. Rolling over the screen, as you know and will look over yourself soon enough when you spend the next hour making sure the editing and added art is up to par, are the expansive credits you made sure someone was tasked with writing up. Along with the stage names and roles of everyone involved, of course, the title will also be rolling along, as well as OnlyFauns' new logo you finally got around to putting together.
Ninja Kitty Debauchery
Truly, a production to be proud of.
"I am still sore all over," the titular cat girl states, gingerly sitting down and wincing at what that does to her battered insides.
"Hey, look at the bright side, you're getting a very hefty bonus for this," you cheer her up. "Not to mention a surcharge if the new line of Faunus Buttplugs hits it off after this."
"I take everything I ever said back, that's definitely racist."
"Please, this is technically interracial porn, it's racist by definition," you argue. "Heck, faunus and humans can have viable offspring, that biologically makes them the same race in the first place. I still see no real point to even differentiate the two, they're subspecies at most."
"... Whatever." Taking a drink from the bottle of lemonade she's clutching, Blake looks at the crew of people cleaning the set you've been working on up. "What now?"
"Now you rest a bit while I go and do other things. I have a busy night ahead of me."
"After all of... this?" She blanches. "You're insane."
"The maddest hatter on Remnant," you grin at her. At her blank look, you just wave her off. "It's just an old story, don't mind it. Oh, and could you do me a favor and distract Muscle?"
With that, you're up and going, just barely avoiding MuscleBustle as she comes through the door, quietly cursing and muttering about how she would rip off your dick to keep for herself. Someone's being a grumpy ferret~!
"Oh look, there's a new upload!" Say about Ruby whatever (nice things) you wanted, but she was most definitely dedicated once she really set her mind to something. Whether it was making the beautifullest weapon on Remnant or judging and rating a bunch of human/faunus p- p- naughty stuff.
"Ruby, can we please not? On the awkward scale of one to ten, watching this kind of stuff with my little sister is, like, way up there," Yang complained, being a party pooper again.
"Yaaang, it is important both to me personally and my growth as a person that I not be allowed to esplore unsavoury parts of the CCT unsupervised," she paraphrased their dad. "That means I need someone to watch with me, don't you see?"
"Could you two pipe down a little?" Weiss asked from where she was sitting on her bed in her actual sleepwear rather than just wearing pajamas like any normal person. "It's getting pretty late for me and I-"
"Weiss! Me bestest bestie!" Ruby said, waving her arms around. "How about it, would you like to join us in perusing-"
"No, Ruby, thank you very much."
"Why not? It's gonna be aweeesooome!" Jumping at Weiss' bed, Ruby laid herself on it just like Zwei sometimes did.
"Ruby! Down!"
"Aw, c'mooon, think of it as a team bonding exercise I am conducting as team RWBY's leader?" She asked, gesturing for the screen they had up currently showing a cat faunus and a ferret faunus groping each other all over as they fought.
"That'd need Blake here, too, sooo..." Yang said, only to be interrupted by the door opening, their black-haired teammate coming inside carrying a bag in one hand.
"Hey everyone."
"Nevermind me, then," Ruby's sister grumbled.
"Nevermind what?" Blake asked, closing the door behind herself.
"Our glorious team leader has decided to declare her twisted little desires official team policy," Yang incorrectly explained, causing Ruby to round up on her.
"Dear sister Yang, are you trying to imply I am somehow misusing my authority as leader of team RWBY?" She would have gone on for longer, but something was distracting her- Weiss was frowning while looking at the screen, currently showing the cat faunus from earlier, attempting to fight an actor Ruby was fairly certain might actually be Gabriel if she squinted really hard.
Was there something wrong with... Oh, hey, she was defeated in one move and now in chains, with a collar around her neck. It was a nice look, too; Ruby sure wouldn't mind making her watch as she made out with Gabr... i... el...
"I wouldn't put it like that, but you really are stretching the limits of our platonic team relationship here, sis," Yang said, but Ruby didn't have the capacity to care right then.
No way.
Nooo waaay.
"What's she doing then that- What are you watching there?"
Ruby compared the faunus girl on the screen with the human girl in the room. The face. The body shape. The hair.
The ribbon.
"Blake," Weiss said. "I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer with full honestly, okay?"
The ribbon was twitching.
"Weiss, I don't what has you-"
"Blake, did you or did you not-"
"OH MY GOD, BLAKE," Ruby screamed, "YOU'RE A PORN STAR AND YOU HAD SEX WITH GABRIEL!"
"Wait, what?" Yang asked, confused.
"I- Ruby- No-"
"Blake, I cannot believe you hid-"
"Why didn't you tell us, we-"
"-ow could you-"
"-lease- I-"
"Okay, CAN EVERYONE SHUT UP FOR A SECOND?!" They all went quiet at Yang's outburst, Ruby's sister nodding satisfied. "Good. So. Blake. Are you that faunus girl getting a sex toy shoved up her ass right there on the screen right now?"
"I-" Blake was visibly struggling with herself, eyeing the door she just came in through, when she dropped the bag she was carrying, reaching for her weapon.
A cat tail buttplug came rolling out of it.
"That explains that," Yang nodded. "Weiss, do you have an issue here?"
"Of course I do!" The heiress exclaimed. "Blake is wearing that ribbon to purposefully fool us into thinking she is human when she isn't!"
"What, you got a problem with me being faunus? Is that what this is?" Blake asked, immediately going all passive-aggressive.
"No, I don't care you're a faunus, Blake, that isn't the point! I couldn't care less if you were human, faunus, a man or three midgets stacking themselves onto each other! My problem is that you were hiding it until this-" Weiss gestured for the veritable storm of s- sex going on on the screen, "-came up!"
"Look, I was hiding from some people and I was tired of people judging me for being a faunus, okay? I just wanted to... get away from that for a while. If that offends you, I'm sorry." Blake said.
"Oh, so now you're blaming me for feeling betrayed over this, is that it?" Weiss fumed. "You're making yourself the victim when it's really you-"
"Okay, stop!" Ruby said, coming between the two. "Look, I think we're all getting a little heated over nothing here. Blake! You had sex with Gabriel, and you knew him, after all. Was it as mindblowing as it looks on that holo-screen?"
"I- what does that have to do with anyth-"
"Ababababap! Answer, the question, Blake. Did it feel great?"
Uncomfortably, Blake shifted from one foot to another. "It... did? I don't get what-"
"So! We have established, unanimously, as Team RWBY, that sex with Gabriel is great and we should have more of it," Ruby nodded, satisfied.
"Uh, sis, not to rain on your parade, but I have never jumped the man's pants," Yang interrupted, immediately stopping Ruby's argument in its tracks as the horrible truth was revealed.
"Yang! Why wouldn't you-" she began, only for her sister to interject again.
"Ruby, I get it, you are into this and you want everyone to have sex with your 'boyfriend'," Yang began ranting, "but he is your boyfriend and I'm not into whatever it is you've got going on with him."
Hah! Perfect opening! "Okay, so can we, as Team RWB, agree that Gabriel is hot, that sex with him is great and that Yang is a heretic?"
Weiss was just holding her forehead, while Blake was looking between everyone, confused. Success! Her teammates weren't fighting anymore!
"Okay, back on to the real topic! Blake, are you sorry about using your dastardly disguise to trick people that are supposed to trust you with their lives and vice versa?!" Ruby asked, demanding a straight answer.
"I, I guess..." Good enough, Blake.
"And Weiss! Are you satisfied with this apology? Furthermore, is it okay if she just takes off that ribbon already it keeps wiggling?"
Weiss sighed, leaning back and crawling under her bedcovers. "I do not care anymore, do whatever you want. And Blake?"
"Bwuh?"
"Next time something like this comes up, just say you're sorry and we'll forgive you, okay? Or better yet, just don't do it in the first place."
"... Okay."
"Great!" Ruby exclaimed. "Now that that's cleared up, let's rewatch this masterpiece and critique Blake's performance!"
""Ruby..."" Everyone groaned.
"What? You don't want to poke at her over this? How is Blake supposed to get better without being told what she did well and what she could improve on?"
Suffice to say, team RWBY's dorm room continued to be filled with voices and, indeed, the sounds of a certain porno deep into the night.
A certain maid, fairy and currently shrunk bee gave each other nods, conferring information between each other and their master.
Sarah groaned, looking over the accounting of OnlyFauns. Specifically, the sales of a certain line of toys, along with a breakdown of general sales this evening.
"It just doesn't make sense... Why does this happen, and how?"
You just pat her shoulder. "Don't worry, Sarah. The sooner you learn to accept the world just doesn't make sense, the sooner you can just enjoy yourself and go with the flow."
Sarah just continued to sigh, watching the numbers climb higher.
You have, for the longest time, carried with you a whole bunch of soul bits taken from various deaths caused by you or otherwise, mainly just out of a general desire to hoard anything potentially useful down the line. Luckily, the time to use them has, in fact, once more come.
What you are after, right now, is not so much some sort of nuanced and specialized abilties; instead, you want a powerful minion you can send out to have your boneheaded (heh) skeletons actually do stuff.
To that end, you quickly pick out two somewhat similar souls from among the reams and reams of souls you ate back in Rapture, the sheer quantity of the splicers you ate thanks to the Thinker's assistance meaning you just have to get the library to sort them for similar skill sets and knife proficiency a little before having the Maid pop them over to the Lake for processing.
That prepared, you just fish for the soul bits that feel the most aggressive out of what you have on hand, spitting everything out and chanting your spell. "Take what I have gathered and assemble it into a spectral servant, to rise and go forth to do my will!"
There's a reason you prefer to do this stuff in private where nobody can hear you.
Anyways, the gathered ingredients, a human silhouette and a collection of burning embers and hateful eyes, in your mental vision (they tend to look a little different every time, honestly) begin to swirl around each other, a vortex of resentment and anger drawing in and fusing to the human soul until, with a final slash of non-light, the process is done, your new creation standing before you.
Granted, it looks just like a bunch of semi-corporeal bones, cloaked in a veil of shadows with a bunch of knives hidden along every other bone, but hey, you aren't going to judge.
"Massster," it croaks out with a voice that sounds like a cross between creaking bones and steel being unsheathed, "what isss your desire?"
Looks like it came out well, all in all. "You are going to lead a bunch of completely unintelligent undead into battle," you explain. "There isn't exactly any lack of enemies out there, as you might know."
A quick bit of testing reveals your new minion's combat capability to be somewhat decent; it is fast, even by your standards, if not faster than you, and the spectral skeleton actually has two pairs of arms to stab things with, two of which are hidden under the cloak. It also never runs out of knives, for that matter, and seems supernaturally accurate with them, so if it has any weak points to aim at, those should be riddled with damage fairly easily.
A success, all in all. You can't wait sending it off to senselessly murder Grimm as it commands the handful of bone boys you've assembled for just this purpose.
Some may consider it unnecessarily cruel, to truss up living prisoners after breaking their arms and legs, then place them on a big table together with the rest of the food. The thing is, it isn't unnecessary- just expedient, and that's all the difference.
After all, how else are you going to have a family dinner with a bunch of vampires in the mix?
"Mhm." Okita doesn't seem to mind, of course, her level of empathy best described as 'is it tasty?' There is, after all, a reason she basically just jumped ship after defeating the demon king and didn't think anything of changing sides, back when you first found her. "Tasty."
"You like the steak? I'm trying a new recipe," you tell her as you put the grilled potatoes on the table, the slime maids you're using as kitchen aids carrying the rest of the food. Technically, Okita is being really impolite, starting before you're seated, but really, it's Okita.
What else could you expect?
"I still say we should have just put a few faucets in them," Sarah insists, eyeing the seven people positively stinking of fear arranged around the dishes as they are. "It's one thing to just bite into them normally, but this is the dinner table, we need some kind of silverware to fit the occasion."
"Just think of them as fingerfood," Nora suggests. "They're there to be grabbed and eaten in one bite. Perfectly normal."
Ahh, family dinners. You haven't done anything like this in, oh, way too long.
Nakasone Hisao (first name means Long-Lived Man) had always believed in humanity's drive to exceed itself, whether through individual courage in the face of injustice or through advancing science as a means of understanding and taming the world.
That was exactly why he studied biology and medicine; many people all around the world suffered from diseases, disabilities both congenital and acquired and more, and it was the duty of everyone capable of doing so to aid them.
Suffice to say, he had a few bones to pick with certain pharmacological practices.
That said, working in Academy City was like a dream come true for him, all the funding and research materials he could ever ask for accessible as long as he went through the proper channels and filled out all the paperwork. Sure, he also had to take part in some other projects, but why would he ever complain about more inspiration, ideas and approaches to his own passion projects?
The awakening of esper powers through the use of various drugs and concoctions in combinations with certain devices, for one, were incredibly interesting... As were the theories as to how esper powers came to be in the first place.
As eventual part of the Level 5 Shift project, Nakasone Hisao very much disagreed with the slaughter of clones as a way of advancement- not only was it highly unethical, it also smacked of blind belief in the commandments of a higher power.
He never told that madman Kihara as much, of course, instead simply arranging for some of the others to come together in their shared disapproval- not even a part of that blasted family could ignore a decisive appeal by enough researchers for them to put their energy to better use elsewhere, afer all.
Then Uyehara Yoshiaki got into an argument and was shot in the face over it.
Now, he was a patient man, but the moment a madman starts murdering any that disagree with them, Nakasone was out of there- he didn't exactly cherish the idea of sharing a fate with Uyehara. Unfortunately, Kihara had already cracked, and found him before he could officially leave the project.
Death was unpleasant, to say the least. Unpleasant and also far less permanent than he'd always expected it to be.
The world of Remnant was... different. The omnipresent threat of the Grimm, unstoppable murdermachines. Technology entirely based upon dust, the incredible energy source he, or rather she, now, didn't have any idea how to approach. And of course the tales of huntsmen, warriors capable of superhuman feats through the use of aura, which very much did not sound like some sort of variant of the esper solution.
None of that had much bearing on the new street urchin known only as Indigo, though. And before she even managed to set up a little backalley clinic in an effort to attract attention from the kinds of people that could help her reach her full potential in this world, she was taken by a sudden flash of light, tortured and eaten by an insane cannibal monster.
And now kept inside some kind of pseudo-afterlife, this time around.
Sometimes, she wondered why her life was like this.
Brawn really just wanted to live his life, and if that meant he was selling the good dust under the table, then fuck it, who was to tell him otherwise? Not like he was hurting much of anyone, many of the people he sold to actually needed this stuff.
Well, sudden teleportation was, apparently. That and the torture. Maybe the part where he was eaten afterwards. In the end, he only did regret he couldn't help that Indigo chick escape.
"Moh, hey, I think this one was a reincarnator," you say, dropping the now dead body onto the table. "From the same dimension Yoshi came from, too, if I'm reading her memories right."
"Huh." Poking the corpse, Okita tilts her head. "How do they taste like?"
"Just like any other people, mostly, with a little additional aftertaste," you explain. "I think it's because the soul gets a bit messy upon reincarnating in some way, but don't quote me on that."
"Mhm." Retunring to her own food, Okita takes a bite before her next sentence. "Never figured Yo-Yo out."
"He was probably trying to keep it secret. Also, Yo-Yo?" You smile at her. "There has to be a story behind that."
"Mhm."
Leaving Okita to her food for a while when she doesn't say anything further (she's on her third steak by now, so you probably did something right), you turn towards Sarah and Nora instead.
"And then he looked him in the eye, and said 'Oh my, would you look at that' and stepped into the pile of shit himself!" Your sister is telling that old story again? "Next thing I know, he's jumping all over the lawn just to make a point and the old fucker is cursing and screaming his head off, but he can't catch him!"
"That, is the most Gabriel thing I have ever heard," Nora smiles, taking a drink (not from a person this time). "So what happened next?"
"Gabriel took up a hobby of literal shitflinging. Every day, before the sun came up, he would go there and randomly throw something onto the man's lawn for the next month. At the end of it all, he was so angry he got a gun and tried to shoot him, but got the mailman instead, because Gabe was just waiting for it, and he got arrested for manslaughter," your lovely little sister tells Nora. "In the end, everyone learned one important lesson: If I show up and step in your dog's shit, you apologize and ask if you can clean it up for me!"
Ahh, this is just the kind of laughter you wanted to hear when you organized this. Also, time for another chomp- you got these people here, would be a waste not to eat them.
The sewers aren't really the most glamorous place one would thing about seeking glory out inside, but they also are kind of necessary to keep up actual civilization that doesn't stink like literal shit.
Hence, you're down here, in the surprisingly clean and orderly corridor leading you deeper into Vale's network of sewers. More importantly, it doesn't even stink all that much down here- apparently, the right combination of dust can actually deal with the smells, as long as everything works as intended.
Which is why it's so important to look into figuring out exactly why one section of the somewhat labyrinthian underground network you're now making your way through is just straight up stinky as fuck. Also why this mission was flagged as a priority, you suppose.
Naturally, you aren't exactly going to walk all the way like some scrub or anything; you have physics-defying powers, there's no way you wouldn't use them.
Pushing yourself into your shadow in a well-practiced motion, you dart off through the featureless, blank walls of the sewers; knowing that the sewage is flowing under the reinforced grates running along both sides of the path you are moving on.
You have a fairly decent idea of where you are going, thanks to the quick check-in you had with the sewer workers' foreman that showed you a map of the place, easily pointing out the affected area.
On the way, you idly consider just how and why places like this are so important; for a civilization that literally gets overrun by giant hordes of untiring murdermachines whenever people are too unhappy, surely ensuring the smooth operation of places like sewers, hospitals and similar has to be of utmost importance, or at least high enough on the list of priorities people spend actual money on it.
Contrary to Earth Bet, at least, which is... kind of depressing. Does it really take a literal gun to the head for people in power to take care of things like this proactively instead of just neglecting the budget in favour of pet projects until something breaks and fixing it costs extra?
Yes, probably. You know humanity too well to think otherwise.
Either way, the place you're meant to find is easy enough to recognize. The walls are solid enough, but the grates you can see are clearly damaged, the lights nearby smashed and if you had a nose right now, you're sure breathing would invite a horrible stink to find you, the air filters everything around completely malfunctioning, which was why the workers found out about this as soon as they did in the first place.
Time to have a look around.
Now, the mysteriously damaged area (lack of maintenance your ass) isn't all that large, truth be told; this means that while you can't overlook all of it in ten seconds, scouting it out just takes a couple minutes in itself.
Tracing the damaged grates in your shadow form, it is immediately obvious the metal was repeatedly cut into from two sides, a flat tool of some kind applied repeatedly. This doesn't much look like the work of human hands; if anything, almost like they were gnawed through by strong teeth.
The lights are a little harder to draw conclusions from, but if you had to judge, you would say you're dealing with some kind of large rodent, or...
A kind of rat Grimm.
Just like what's leisurely walking around right over there, black and white body stepping along and walking over the shadow that you are right now. The whole creature is fairly small, as far as these things go, hardly meeting your knee height, but its teeth look exactly like what would have damaged the sewers.
So very nice of this thing to reveal itself...
Literally shadowing the rat Grimm, seeing as you kind of need to find out more about it, you move over to cling onto the ceiling, using your power to do so readily and easily as it marches along, making its way through the seemingly abandoned part of the sewers already ravaged.
It almost seems to... patrol, to keep watch for any humans that might be approaching. Spending a few long minutes on that, it, finally satisfied, returns the way it came, finally approaching a specific part of the destroyed length of grates.
And jumps inside, literally swimming into the flowing sewage.
Well, can't nobody say you aren't dedicated to your job.
Gliding in right after it, squeezing your shadow-self through the gnawed opening and into the somewhat tight tunnel, you do your best to follow the creature, visibility being literal shit as it is.
Still, you manage, and soon enough the Grimm pushes itself through a cracked hole in the wall, obviously not meant to be there. Hot on its tail, you emerge into some sort of cavern, a cave dug out by many small claws.
You know, because you can literally see hundreds of these things scattered everywhere, walking over each other as they behave like some kind of hive, moving from one place or another.
An unpleasantly large amount of them, then, is paying attention to the one oversized Grimm rodent you just came after. This place, you reckon, should be large enough for you to detransform inside, offering enough space for your vampire form... but only just. Anything larger would have difficulty fitting, and actually fighting in such close quarters would be extremely hard.
On the other hand, waiting for them to spread out is just asking for half of them to escape all over the sewers, if you were to guess, considering their previous behaviour and actual scouts looking out for humans that might find them, in contrast to usual Grimm behaviour...
Peering around the cave, you can see several entrances, much like the one you came in through, as well as a hole in the ceiling these Grimm likely came in through. Well, you'll just have to keep them from diving into the sewage, then, you suppose- there aren't that many exits, at least.
Considering the spacing, you position yourself, making sure you'll be able to keep the situation under some kind of control, before literally jumping out of your shadow, stomping onto and summarily killing the Grimm you followed inside, casually waving a hand to block off a couple of the exits with a well-placed cyclone trap.
Smirking at the sudden silence in the chamber, you give the gathered Grimm a smug smirk... before what feels like a solid wall of chittering impacts you, the rat Grimm massing themselves to meet you.
It's a fight!
Your eyes quickly darting around the area, you quickly decide against physically ripping into the swarm of Grimm, instead focusing on the low level of sewage sitting in this whole place, splashing out and around every time one of these things comes or goes.
It's not exactly your preferred choice of conductor, but it'll have to do. Sparking your claws, you punch them into the ground, the electricity traveling around and frying a decent amount of Grimm in an instant.
Issue is, a lot of the things are still around, and they come over you like a fucking avalanche!
That said, you can, luckily enough, just turn into a shadow to evade their initial assault, darting off to the side and rematerializing before the rest of the rats, the ones that tried to scatter the moment you showed up. Raising your hands, you casually push out another cyclone trap, also loaded with a veritable thunderstorm, as you hold one hand into the disgusting brew at your feet, the other one ready to catch the minion you are creating all the while.
Sequentially, the rat Grimm activate your trap(card)s, being explosively blown away as surges of electricity take out chunks of their swarm wholesale, their small bodies dissipating quickly and easily. You, on the other hand, suddenly hold a copy of Pinky the Sloth in the hand not busy recharging your internal reserves of electricity by absorbing the current around yourself, the pink sloth yawning as it prepares for what it knows you want it to do.
Fun fact, Pinky doesn't need to be in its full size to use its lightning breath, as the gathered creatures of Grimm before you get to experience, crashing thunder all that soon remains of your latest victims.
However, just as the gathered mass of rat Grimm is reeling, you can see what was hiding underneath their teeming bodies all this time; some kind of box with a mechanism you can only describe as 'probably dust based'. However, if you had to guess, it's probably a bomb, knowing what you do about how dust works.
And the foreboding beeping of the thing...
Okay, you have no idea about this thing's yield, but you don't really need to to want to avoid having it explode in your face. Now, how do you stop it?
Well, if you had any interest whatsoever in dealing with the finer parts of dust-based technology, you may feel inclined towards trying to disarm it, but as it is, the best idea you have is to just put it somewhere it won't be able to hit you.
"Cover me, Pinky!" Throwing the pink sloth into the middle of the room, you leave it to deal with the rat Grimm everywhere around you, its protesting cries promptly ignored as you race towards the bomb, chant already on your lips. "To the shadows we give, from the shadows we take!"
Sparking the fingers on one hand against each other to get the kind of light you need to throw a shadow, you literally stomp on the device beeping away, pushing it inside the storage field of your own dark silhouette just in time, a shockwave traveling up your leg before you manage to close it up again.
Phew!
Meanwhile, Pinky has been busy distracting the rats, so you join it in quickly cleaning up. Now that you aren't pressed for time, it's fairly easy to wipe them out in short order, especially as you make heavy use of Cyclone Trap to keep any of them from running.
Once done with that, all that's left is to investigate the crack in the ceiling these Grimm came in through, just in case, before your mission is complete. You have to say, this did go easier than expected, actually.
Headmaster Ozpin carefully gazed at the headlines displayed in his holographic screen, regarding the huntsman in the room with himself.
"In my defense," Mister Livsey said, "I had no idea the entire warehouse was going to explode like that. I thought I had the time to call you and have someone defuse the bombs inside."
'Millionaire saves Vale again, discovering improper dust storage methods and evacuating surroundings, no casualties!'
"You seem to have spun the news well enough on the spot already, at least," Ozpin tiredly replied, resisting the urge to massage his brow in favor of drinking some of the only substance that let him function this early in the morning; some hot chocolate, the proof the gods had not entirely forsaken them. "Now would you mind repeating what you found out once more?"
Shrugging, the man gave him a lazy grin. "Went down there to investigate irregularities with sewer maintenance, thinking it'd just be a quick job before I got back on everything else I'm taking care of for the week," he repeated, confirming where he went during the weekdays. "Just a bit of exercise, you know how it is. Down there, I encountered some type of rat-like Grimm that seemed to have been digging into the sewers for a few days and caused some serious damage in that time, as well as a bomb that activated likely in response to my proximity or that of the semblance minion I sent in there. Side note, I would not recommend shrinking yourself down to swim through sewage, no matter how necessary it may be."
"Noted," Ozpin replied neutrally, repressing the smile at the thought of the man in front of him wading through the sewers.
"I managed to safely detonate the bomb, as well as defeat the Grimm present, before investigating the area above the Grimm nest. Which turned out to be a warehouse full of more bombs, which is when I simply walked out and sent you the message you received. Long story short, someone apparently decided to blow everything up, I was on the cameras casually walking away while busy with my scroll when a giant explosion tore the surroundings up, then I just went with the flow and rephrased the truth a little while cooperating with emergency response forces until Glynda came and fixed everything."
Now if only everyone working with Ozpin showed the same level of spontaneous forethought. "Very well, let us consider the effects of what happened, then, and what conclusions we can draw from it. For one, it seems likely that whoever attacked Amber are the same people behind this newest incident, given the timing and seemingly indiscriminate nature of the likely planned attack- destroying the sewers, potentially city-wide, would sow panic and confusion..."
"Which would in turn draw the Grimm, and potentially serve as smokescreen for their real intentions, yeah. Though, do we really have to do this now? I kind of had something planned later..."
"Yes, I am afraid we must," Ozpin agreed, drawing upon all his power as an educator keeping an unruly student in place.
Mister Livsey sighed.