I wont lie, this chapter broke me for awhile, when I started writing it almost a year ago, A lot had happened in my life that prevented me from writing it properly, A new job, graduating college, a car accident, I sorta lost my will to write for a while. I ended up rewriting this chapter so so many times. It soon became like my arch enemy, whenever I sat down to try and write it I just ended up starting at the screen and not knowing where to go. And this was on top of my other writing projects and work. And I have made it no secret that I am not exactly a huge fan of RWBY as a series. In all honesty the last full season I watched was season 2. Most of what I know about what is currently going on is mostly through cultural osmosis and even then I have no plans to really do anything with it since well I have my own roadmap for how this story will go.
I do want to give a big thank you to a good friend of mine. for the past gods 7 years now he has been basically my editor and confidant when it comes to Bloodmoon. So Jascoe THANK YOU so much for helping me through everything all of this. especially this chapter. It wouldn't have been done without his input and our many many many discussions regarding not just Bloodmoon but other things as well.
So I present the latest chapter of Bloodmoon: We Didn't Start the Fire. Edited by: Jascoe.
thank you so much for your time and patience with this. Its nice to be back.
The room was dark, Beo felt the mattress underneath him creek as he woke, another hospital? How did he get here? The last thing Beo remembered was…Beo sighed, it had happened again, that sinking into the blood, the need to survive at any cost driving him forward. He closed his eyes as he sat up in his bed and tried to think back to that night.
He saw flashes of blood, broken bones and butchered bodies.
He remembered….excitement. A struggle, claw and fang against a golden fire.
Yang….he fought Yang. Normally he only would recall brief flashes of the carnage but he remembered nearly every detail of his duel with his friend.
What's more…behind the mania and frenzy, he enjoyed the fight. He had fun, it was all still far beyond his control but, he knew that for a brief moment in that blood frenzy he and whatever beast dwelled within his semblance were in sync. He doubted he would be able to stop before he killed her had she not scored that final blow. The feeling however stuck with him regardless.
The door opened, and stepping through along with a nurse and several security guards was Glynda Goodwitch. The older blonde huntress looked tired so tired in fact that she did not even bother to mask her disappointment and frustration towards her ward currently bound by the wrists to the hospital bed.
"Mister Cobalt." She said "Awake already, good, we have a lot to discuss. A Lot."
Beo blinked at her and sighed. Too which Goodwitch frowned.
"10 dead, 20 grievously wounded and placed into intensive medical care along with nearly 15 thousand lien in damages to Dock number 12. Not counting the containers filled with grimm recovered from the site. These numbers, Beo, were the results of your actions alone." Goodwitch said. Her eyes, cold.
Beo tried to get a read on the older woman but found it difficult. The others in the room were much easier. Fear. They were afraid of him. Beo stared at her and blinked. He supposed she wanted to make him feel bad about the deaths? or the damages? He understood that it wasn't normal for lives to be taken. But at that moment it was kill or be killed. He wouldn't, no couldn't feel remorse for the act of surviving. And so he didn't, the only thing he did was sigh again and shrug.
"I will have none of that sullen resignation from you young man! Your actions have led to the death of others not only that but other students and yourself! Need I go over the amount of bones in your body that were shattered? Perhaps the torn ligaments and ruptured organs that you were lucky to have your semblance repair at such a rapid rate! I refuse to believe that after all the work the two of us have done that you are nothing more than the feral beast of a brat we took in those months ago!" She exclaimed. Her unusually emotional outburst surprised herself as well as the others in the room. Glynda took a breath and tried again.
"What I was trying to say was; we certainly have a lot to discuss, Mister Cobalt." she said, taking out a tablet and scrolling down the page.
But why then, why was it that Beo felt this almost frustration at her words. It wasn't that he had killed them. No. it was something else.
Control.
He lost control. Was that it? Was it really that simple a reason?
He looked at a waiting Goodwitch.
"I won't apologize for trying to survive." He signed or tried to, It was difficult to do so with his arms bound.
"Unbind his hands for dust's sake. He's clearly in control of his faculties. And I am not asking you to Beo." Glynda said to his surprise. "What is done is done. However this cannot be left alone. 10 people are dead and you were the one holding the knife."
"So?"
"Normally an offense like this would result in incarceration in the worlds most secure facility off the coast on Ironshakle Island however, given your unique situation." she sighed. "Your punishment-"
"I need to control it…"Beo said. "I…remember, blood, carnage, Yang."
Glynda was left aghast. He spoke. Outside of his normal speech therapy.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Go on," She said.
"Punish me, whatever you want…don't care much, better than being eaten. Need to control myself. Other me. Blood me."
Glynda didn't know what to feel, on one hand she was frustrated by the lack of remorse for his actions for the deaths he caused. On the other however, her ward was speaking, on his own and was seeking to control a part of himself that Glynda was in all honesty hoping to never have seen again.
"I see." She said, "That being said Beo, this incident cannot and will not go without repercussions. Your clear lack of remorse for the lives you have taken shows that you have a long penance ahead of you, we have much work to do."
Beo did not know exactly what that meant, but he had a feeling that whatever it was Glynda had in mind, he was not going to like it. As she turned and left the room with the orderlies she suddenly stopped at the door.
"And Mister Cobalt…I am glad you are unharmed." she said before leaving him confused as to why he felt relieved and guilty at the same time.
A few hours later, Yang was finally given her discharge papers, under the condition that she not do anything to open up her wounds and that she had to keep her fists bandaged for at least a week. She had just changed into a pair of jean short shorts and yellow tank top with a lighter, summer variation of her favorite bomber jacket. She was in the middle of tying her hair back into a large ponytail when there was a knock at her door. She made a face before going to answer it.
Over the past hour the nurses had knocked on her door five times to have her fill out paperwork that she could have easily done on her scroll, at this point she was beginning to think they were making a game out of who could get her to break her bandages first.
"For the hundredth time I already signed the damn paperwork, would you let me get dressed in peace!?" Yang shouted as she opened the door.
"Oh uhm I'm sorry then, should I come back later?" Said a voice that she swore she recognized but couldn't place it. It sounded melodic but with an edge to it that she had really only heard a few times before.
As she looked up she blinked as standing in the doorway clad in a dark blue t-shirt, pants, and beowulf skin pelt his waist was Beo. Instinctively she looked behind him for whomever had spoken.
"Uhhh Yang what are you doing?" He asked.
"Looking to see who's talking Beo." She said,
"Ohhh I uh don't get it." He said. "I mean as far as I know I'm the only one here soooo."
At that Yang looked at her friend as it all hit her at once before she pulled him into the room and slammed the door shut.
"OKAY! So since when could you talk!?" she demanded.
Beo sat down on the bed and looked at her as if the previously mute Man-Grimm suddenly speaking, and speaking full sentences no less wasn't a big deal. Is what she would have thought if he didn't reach into his bag and pull out his white board and began scribbling.
"A while now. Well I mean, that is not exactly true. I am still practicing and it still hurts to talk a bit, Goodwitch has been helping me with speech lessons since I got here." He said casually.
Yang was slightly dumbfounded, she had imagined something a bit more dramatic when or even if Beo spoke, not, well him casually sitting on her hospital bed.
"And the reason why you didn't say anything before today is why exactly?"
" honestly? I didn't really have anything that I thought was worth saying. That and it really does hurt sometimes if I talk too much." He said massaging his throat.
Yang was still dumbstruck by the fact that Beo was talking in the first place let alone talking so well. It actually made her a little mad and even then all she could do by that point was laugh.
To which Beo simply responded with a shrug and said.
"And I didn't need words for you to understand me."
Yang fell silent again and for the first time in a while, felt a heat rise up in cheeks…was she blushing? No, no that's not possible now way in hell was BEO of all people making her blush, from words no less! It must be a side effect of her treatments, yeah! yeah! must be that, of course.
"Is there something wrong?" he asked, knocking her out of her spiral.
"W-wha no course not! cool as a cucumber that's me." She said unsure if she believed herself.
Beo looked at her, his eyes seemingly boring holes into her. She shifted beneath his gaze and felt another blush threaten to creep up to her cheeks before he broke the silence.
"I hurt you. At the docks. I hurt a lot of people. You stopped me, Yang, you saved me. Thank you."
Whatever odd sense of embarrassment or tension seemed to melt away at those words. What had happened then was horrific, and Yang herself never had considered what Beo had felt during that time.
"What's it like…when you are like that? Its the second time I've seen ya like that y'know."
"It is like" he paused for a moment. "It is like being overloaded with strength and fury. I feel angry, I need to fight, to survive. It scares me. Like I was in control but also like I was being controlled. I do not remember much of what happened."
"O-oh" Yang began,
"But I do remember this, and I did not tell this to Goodwitch, I remember…in some dark twisted place inside myself, that I was enjoying the carnage, and the blood spraying in my face. But it was like watching something that was not me but was at the same time."
Beo's eyes seemed distant. As if he were trying to remember a nightmare he'd rather forget. Yang knew Beo was not someone to shy away from blood and violence. And clearly didn't have problems killing not just the Grimm but people as well. Which did give her pause.
She sat down next to him and sighed.
"You killed people too," she simply said.
"Yes, I did," he said.
"Do you feel-"
"Bad?" Beo paused. "No, I cannot let myself. They would have killed us, you, the others, I feel bad that I hurt you. And the ones who did not die. But the ones who did, what is the phrase for it? Rules of nature?"
"That's, I'm sorry but I understand what you mean but I can't agree with that being the best solution." Yang said.
She wasn't naive; she knew exactly why Beo did what he did and was the way he was. She had calmed down some, her face still burning slightly but she buried the feeling as she took a breath again to process everything.
"So, what happens next?" She asked. Her hands gripping the hospital bed sheets.
"That's part of why I was even allowed to see you today." Beo said. his voice started to grow scratchy and coarse.
She could feel his eyes on her but she didn't look up to meet them. She couldn't explain why she couldn't now.
"I am…not going to be around for the rest of the month." He coughed. "I need to understand what I am. So Goodwitch is placing me in solitary training. Non negotiable."
"Where?" Yang said before even she had realized.
"I am…not sure I am allowed to tell you…" He began before she finally looked at him.
"Where?" She didn't know what kind of face she had made or what her eyes were telling him. But when their eyes did meet. His almost wine colored pools softened.
"The Emerald Forest, Ozpin, Goodwitch and the Beacon security council are setting up an exclusion zone, a barrier to prevent me from escaping if I lose control again while learning how to…control it." he said. "I don't know when I will be back…I just wanted to say thank you."
Yang wanted to say something clever, funny, charming, anything really but every word seemed stuck in her throat. She just watched him as he stood, smiled at her and walked out of the room.
Yang didn't know how long she just sat there, but she did know one thing for sure now, that wasn't how she wanted to end her first conversation with her friend.
"Fuck this place" She said as she gathered her bag and left the hospital.
The Man in the Pinstriped Suit could barely hide his excitement as he read the latest issue of the Vale Gazette.
His adoring audience seemed to be eating up his latest piece. "A horrid display of malice and disregard for both life and respect for the dead." His smile could not be contained. Finally the embargo on his latest piece had been lifted and the reviews were flooding in.
Add onto that when he had reviewed his borrowed footage of the dock incident. He had realized that he had seen both the monstrous boy and the young lady who tamed the beast he became. Some weeks or perhaps a month ago speeding down the streets of Vale when he had first arrived.
Further investigations into the public registry found nothing on the boy but the girl, Yang Xiao Long, a first year at Beacon academy and someone who had quite the reputation amongst the underground for club and bar room brawls. While he knew she may be beyond his ability to subdue, and craft into art, and he couldn't do the same to the boy with what is ultimately coming for him.
But perhaps…he could produce a show like no other with them.
He felt his grin grow wider and wider, yes yes that was what he could do, a show! A performance, Beauty and her Beast! But for what reason? That was the rub. It needed to end with the beast in his possession for whichever of the powers that be to bid for.
He needed something else then, a third player, something to act as the centerpoint of this living portrait so to speak. How fortunate he was when he discovered it.
"A sister, ah a rose by any other name would not suit this role for any but you." He said.
Ruby Rose, he could not think of a better one to serve as the lure to what could very well be his masterpiece.