Friday night. Eight o'clock. Weiss sat alone at a long table, surrounded by textbooks. It wasn't as satisfying as she'd hoped. She flipped a page, propped her chin in her hand, and wished they hadn't stopped getting homework after their written exams ended. It was infuriating, to have so much time and nothing productive to spend it on.
She got some food. The dining hall was closed for the event, so she ate a bowl of granola that tasted like sawdust and tried to ignore the faint scent of salmon hors d'oeuvres coming from the ballroom.
She relaxed on her bed. With everyone else gone, she could lie on her right side with her back facing the room, instead of putting all her weight on her left shoulder. It felt odd. The music from the dance was too loud to be blotted out with a pillow over her head, even through the walls. She couldn't sleep.
So, she walked. Aimlessly, or so she'd thought—but her body didn't do aimless very well. She spiraled closer and closer to the ballroom, until she could see through the windows. The dark surrounded her. It was oddly comforting to be lost in the shadows, invisible behind the glass, knowing it would act as a mirror to anyone inside.
It was Jaune, of all people, who she noticed first. In her defense, he and his team were clearly the center of the party. They danced in perfect sync, with Ren looking fantastically out of place in his tux and Nora clearly having the time of her life. Her eye twitched as she realized that Jaune had paired a perfectly nice dress with a pair of sneakers, because of course he had. Pyrrha was stunning, and they clashed terribly, but she didn't seem to mind.
Ruby wasn't by the punch bowl like she'd expected, but out on the floor with Penny. Both were making jerky motions with their arms that almost looked like dance moves. For some reason, Ruby had a drink in each hand. She spilled one as Weiss watched, jumped, and tried to rub away the stain at the hem of her dress while she balanced both cups on one arm. Penny smiled and pretended not to notice.
Neptune was alone. Stiff as a fixture at the edge of the room, fiddling with his tie as he watched the others dance. For those few seconds, both of them stood on the outside looking in. There was a kind of comfort to it, a sense of solidarity even though he had no idea she was there. Then Sun crashed into his side, slinging an arm over his shoulders and saying something that made him laugh until he bent double. Just like that he was back in motion, talking to pretty girls and even asking one of the second years to dance.
She braced herself for a surge of emotion, of anger and hurt and jealousy. Instead, she felt a distant, hollow ache. She wanted to be in that room. Not necessarily dancing with Neptune—she'd be as happy to walk up to Ruby and find out why on Remnant she thought she needed two cups of punch. To have seen the moment Jaune walked in, and to know whether or not it had made Pyrrha laugh. And she was annoyed with Neptune, because she could have done all that if he hadn't asked her, if she could have shown up alone without hurting him or worrying that he'd touch her back. But mostly, she was just relieved he wasn't sitting out because of her anymore.
Weiss moved on, passing out of the scattered patches of light cast by the ballroom windows and into deeper shadows. It was much better out here, with only the distant music to remind her. The path wound between a few hedges, scattered with dappled light and shade from a lamppost up ahead.
The smells coming from the ballroom almost drowned it out. Fruit punch and sweat, alcohol and flowers. She was already turning around a hedge when she caught it, the scent of people, not behind her this time but right in front of her. But it was too late to stop, and she thought she was ready, and then she came around the bend and she wasn't. Not at all.
Blake and Yang stood under the lamppost, bathed in warm yellow light. It turned gold where it tangled with blonde hair, highlighted black with violet where it fell on a pair of velvety cat's ears. The two of them were pressed together, Blake's fingers tangled in Yang's hair, Yang's arms wrapped around Blake's waist. Their heads tilted so their noses fit together, like they were trying to erase all the space between them as they kissed.
Weiss wasn't aware of making a noise, but she must have because one of Blake's ears twitched. She ducked back behind the hedges before they could open their eyes and stumbled blindly in the dark, desperate to get away before they noticed her. One of them said something too quiet for her to hear. No one chased her, but she kept running anyway.
She stopped only when she had to, when her chest was seizing against the bindings. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears until she was half convinced it would shake her apart, leeching the fire from her lungs and pumping it into her blood, turning panic to anger. Why was she running? Why was she acting like she'd been caught red-handed, when they were the ones sneaking off and canoodling in the bushes? Had they considered that maybe random passersby didn't want to see that? She had half a mind to go back and tell them—
But then she remembered the way Blake had stood, face tilted up, relaxing into the kiss. The way Yang had laid a palm flat on her back to draw her in, warm and steady. Her chest ached. She couldn't catch her breath.
It was more of the same, that was all. A last straw. She'd been looking in on people enjoying themselves for a long time, and it had added up. It wasn't the kiss that had gotten to her, it was all of it, all the closeness she'd been watching through a pane of glass. She just wanted to be part of some of it, wanted to be in the ballroom—
Wanted to stand under a lamppost with hands in her hair, hands on her back...
But that was impossible, and would stay that way until her birthday. The thought twisted up inside her, bitter and grasping and terribly familiar, hating something beautiful because she couldn't have it.
She looked up at the sky. Somehow she'd ended up in the shadow of the CCT tower, so that the light at the top washed her skin in green. She stood there for a moment, breathing as deeply as she could, wrestling with the feeling. The... jealousy. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to swallow it. She was being ridiculous. This was only a momentary lapse, a brief craving for physical affection manifesting in odd ways. She wasn't even jealous of one of them in particular. It meant nothing.
Her heart reluctantly slowed, until she could finally stop panting and breathe through her nose. She recognized the distant scents of the party, the not-so-distant traces of her teammates still standing alone in the hedges—and someone else. Weiss furrowed her brow, squinting into the dark as she scanned the tower in front of her. The unfamiliar smell was definitely coming from that direction. There was a stranger outside the tower, and close by, or it wouldn't be so strong. Twenty feet away? Less?
"Hello?"
No response... and no one in sight. Her stomach churned. It felt like she'd put her hand through solid brick—two of her senses were suddenly at odds, and she had no idea which she should trust. She kept searching, scanning the building for any trace of what she knew was there. Nothing.
Weiss bristled. Her wings twitched and seized, and she took a step back without really meaning to. Something was wrong, here. Nobody went creeping invisibly around the building that housed worldwide communications and Headmaster Ozpin's office unless they were up to no good.
But how was she supposed to explain this? She couldn't tell her professors that she'd smelled an intruder. She considered the building for a moment, debating whether or not to investigate on her own. Calling her weapons locker was the obvious place to start—but no, Beacon kept a record whenever those were used. The Headmaster would ask questions she couldn't answer.
She could ignore it. Should ignore it, really. Weiss the human would never have noticed in the first place.
Weiss the human would have no idea, when she saw it on the news tomorrow, that whatever was about to happen here was her fault. She took a step towards the tower. Then another and another, until she remembered something that stopped her dead in her tracks. There was a third option she hadn't considered.
With that, she muttered, "Must have been a raccoon," for the benefit of whoever was hiding there, and turned on her heel. As soon as she was out of sight of the CCT, she broke into a run. Even if they'd bought that, they'd probably be moving up their timetable just to be safe.
She sprinted in a broad arc around the place where Blake and Yang had been, because they would have asked awkward questions if they'd spotted her. By the time she arrived at one of the side doors, she was already out of breath. She slipped inside and into a throng of people she only vaguely recognized. Scanning the crowd as subtly as she could, Weiss gave JNPR and Sun and Neptune a wide berth. Blake and Yang were thankfully nowhere to be seen. Finally, after several breathless minutes, she spotted her target.
Ruby and Penny had moved from the dance floor to the wall, and were chatting so animatedly that Weiss worried they'd put someone's eye out. Her partner broke out into a grin the second she noticed her. "Weiss! You came!"
"Is that punch on your dress?"
It was a little mean, maybe, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Ruby looked down, then yelped and bolted for the bathroom. Leaving Weiss alone with Penny.
"You know," she said bluntly.
Penny nodded.
"Follow me. I need your help with something."
Weiss filled Penny in as much as she could on the way to the CCT. She was a little surprised that she was allowed to get all the way through her explanation—and that Penny had followed her at all. "I know I shouldn't be complaining, but... you're just going to take my word for it?"
"That is not necessary," Penny said. "My sensors indicate a heat signature on the top floor of the building."
Definitely a robot, then. How... why...?
But she could worry about that later. Weiss started towards the building, then stopped when Penny stepped in front of her. "I should lead," she said. "You do not have your weapon."
Penny hadn't suggested she call it, which probably meant she knew it would be a dead giveaway for Ozpin. Or maybe she just didn't know about the rocket lockers. Did Atlas Academy have those? Would Penny even get one? And, hang on, "You don't have a weapon either!"
"I am combat ready," Penny announced. A panel in her back slid open, and eight floating swords shot out. Each one had its own magnetism, shifting and changing at a whim, so that they spun gracefully until all their points were aimed at the door of the tower.
Weiss opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. "After you, then."
Inside the CCT was pitch dark. Except for the faint green glow of Penny's eyes, which was eerie enough to make her second guess this entire plan. The building was closed this late at night, but the silence still made Weiss uneasy. She sniffed the air, and caught only a faint hint of someone else in the building. Had they already left?
But it got stronger the higher up they went. They took the stairs, because the elevator would make a noise that might alert the enemy. Penny made it all the way to the top with no apparent difficulty. She wasn't even out of breath. Weiss, meanwhile, tried to pant as quietly as she could while ignoring the pain in her ribs.
Penny glanced at her, clear concern in her eyes. Weiss scowled and jerked her head towards the door to Ozpin's office, raising an eyebrow in question. Are they in there?
She nodded.
Reaching towards the knob, she wiggled her outstretched hand back and forth and then pointed to Penny. Can you open it?
In retrospect, she definitely should have been more specific. Penny tilted her head to one side, considering the problem, then slammed a palm into the door. Her own body barely moved. The door went flying into the opposite wall with the force of a runaway car.
Weiss stood in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. Twenty feet away, an unfamiliar girl stood by Ozpin's terminal with her mouth hanging open. She recovered quickly, snatching up a data drive that had been plugged into the machine and slipping it into her pocket. Then she lowered herself into a defensive crouch, and flipped out a long whip that crackled with lightning Dust. There was a mask over her eyes, white and red and styled to look like a Grimm's. White Fang.
"Schnee," she snarled.
Weiss balled her hands into fists. The girl must have been a faunus if she was one of them, but if it weren't for the mask she would never have been able to tell. No bow, no hat, nothing. She wasn't even trying to hide it. Of course she wasn't. They embraced their animal side, flaunted it, used it to hurt people.
Do you want to be like that?
Well?
Answer me!
It was a pity she didn't have her rapier.
Weiss darted forward, keeping just behind Penny as she skated over a line of glyphs. More popped up on either side of the intruder, so that she had nowhere to run from the eight swords rushing towards her. She yelped and flipped backwards over Ozpin's desk, knocking his terminal to the floor. It smashed and scattered bits of glass everywhere.
...Oops.
The whip flashed out. In the light of the Dust infusing it, Weiss could see a shadowy mass of gears in the ceiling, all ticking in perfect harmony. The intruder jumped over the glyphs boxing her in and swung across the room, her skin fading as she went from brown to dark grey. Soon she blended into the wall so well it was impossible to tell where she was. It didn't help that this room wasn't much brighter than the rest of the tower, with only the dim glow of the beacon to wash it in sickly green light.
Penny barely seemed to notice that the girl had all but vanished. Her swords lashed out again, and a flash of aura marked where the intruder had gone as one of them clipped her side. "What?!" she blurted, dodging frantically between several more until she was back in the center of the room.
"Your abilities will not help you," said Penny. "Please stand down and wait for arrest."
The girl's eyes flicked from Penny, to Weiss, then back again. They flashed yellow. "Like hell." She dove for the window.
Weiss twisted her fingers and blocked it with another glyph. Obstructing the girl's movements was about all she could do, at the moment—she didn't have the Dust for anything more complicated than a barrier glyph. Or the skill for a summons.
The intruder scrambled away from the sudden dead end, taking another hit from Penny's swords as she went. She tried going on the aggressive, but it was abundantly clear that she was outmatched. There were just too many swords for her to focus on, and as agile as she was, she was clearly struggling to handle Penny's sheer strength and speed.
She tried to disengage. Weiss blocked her with more glyphs, forcing her into a smaller and smaller cage with Penny. It was only a matter of time before she went down, and she knew it.
And then, Weiss made the mistake of moving. She took a step and slipped on one of the shards of glass left over from Ozpin's terminal. Her arms shot out instinctively to catch her balance, and they did—but her wings tried to do the same thing. The cramp drove the breath from her lungs and shattered her concentration. Her glyphs popped out of existence, and the intruder slipped past Penny before she could recover.
She slammed into Weiss, sending her tumbling over Ozpin's desk to smash into his chair. It went flying through the window and plummeted fifty stories to the ground. She lay on her stomach, feet from the edge, staring down at its mangled remains. Even then, she was only distantly aware of the danger. Her heart didn't race. Her hands didn't shake. But her wings responded to the drop, fighting against the bindings without any input on her part.
This time, the cramp was so bad that her vision whited out. She scuttled away from the edge on her hands and knees. It wasn't enough. She couldn't catch her breath, couldn't even stand up. The snap of the whip made her raise her arms to defend herself, and Dust crackled against her skin. Her aura shattered. The next strike slipped past her guard and tore a long gash into her side.
"Weiss!"
Penny tried to get her swords between them, but in less than a heartbeat the intruder retracted her whip into a rapier. She thrust forward so that the tip was poised under Weiss' chin. "I'm leaving," she said. "Drop the swords."
"I am incapable of being disarmed." Penny raised her hands, and retracted her weapons into her back. The intruder twitched. "Is this acceptable?"
"Fine," she snapped. "Just back the fuck up."
Penny backed against the wall.
"Good." Without warning, the intruder kicked Weiss' side, hard, right where she'd been cut. She crumpled to the floor, struggling to breathe, and only dimly registered the faunus girl running past her and jumping out the broken window.
"Weiss?" Penny crouched down beside her. "Are you alright?"
Weiss nodded. She touched the wound in her side and winced when her hand came away red. "It's shallow," she said, though she had no idea if she was telling the truth. "We have to go after her—"
"The enemy has likely already reached the ground," said Penny. "I can look for her, but my heat sensors have a limited range. Capture would be better achieved by alerting the authorities and widening the search."
Already reached the ground? What was her landing strategy, free-fall? "Drat."
Penny helped Weiss into the elevator. "You need immediate medical attention," she said, as they started to descend. "I will inform General Ironwood and Professor Ozpin—"
"No."
"But—"
"I mean, yes. Obviously you need to tell someone. But you have to tell them it was you who noticed someone was in there. Don't mention me." Weiss gingerly touched her side and winced. "I can't explain how I knew to anyone else. It's better if no one knows I'm involved."
"What about your injury?"
"I'll deal with it."
Penny frowned. "The odds of infection within the next few days after a complete aura break are—"
"Irrelevant."
"—very high, considering your weakened state."
"Excuse you?"
"You do not appear to have acquired adequate sleep or nutrition for some time. An infection in this condition could severely impede your aura recovery and possibly be fatal."
"I'm not human, Penny," Weiss gritted out. It stung more than she'd expected, saying it out loud. "If I go to the infirmary, they're going to find out. And if that happens—" she faltered, then steeled herself. "If they find out about me, they'll find out about you."
Penny tilted her head to one side in confusion. Then her face fell. "Oh. You are threatening me."
Weiss hadn't thought anyone but Ruby could make her feel this much like she'd kicked a puppy. "You saved my life," she said, more softly this time. "I'm grateful for that. But this is more important to me."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to. You just have to keep a secret."