In case I'm being as unclear as it was in the show, apparently the semester breaks of Huntsmen academies are several weeks to several months long, exact duration unknown. Hence Team RWBY and others having the time to taking a camping trip back across the continent and not miss out on class. I'm also guesstimating a lot with the combat schools/Huntsman academies pipeline: we only know the names of a couple schools and the fact that students forge their weapons there, not how long training is or how old people are admitted. Given how Velvet commented Coco was a heartbreaker at their combat school, and Pyrrha is a four-time champion of something that we presume is a yearly event by the time she's 17, we can assume it's something like high school, which as I'm American translates to about 4 years.
Also, Penny is probably less than three years old, since she was the project that won out over Watts' Atlesian Paladin-290, which was introduced as brand-new prototypes in V2. Honestly, she could easily be less than A YEAR old when she's introduced in V1, since she was supposed to be demonstrate her abilities publicly for the first time at the Vytal Festival.
"You lied to us." Pyrrha said. She was still reeling from everything she had seen in Jinn's vision, but… that was the one thing she could grasp onto, the one solid fact that she had. Team RWBY, Jaune, had lied to her. They had lied to her and Ren and Nora for months.
"Technically, we only deceived you." Weiss muttered, and Yang shifted to subtly –but not gently– kick her in the shin. "Ow!"
"What Weiss meant," Yang said tightly, eyes sliding away from her teammate and softening as they met Pyrrha's. "-is that we didn't lie to you on purpose. I mean, think about it. Would you believe us if we came to you on the first day of Beacon and told you all this shit?"
Pyrrha opened her mouth –then closed it. Yang was right… but that answer didn't feel right.
"I wanted to tell you." Jaune said, and the emotion in his eyes made it almost impossible to look at him full in the face as Pyrrha's eyes involuntarily twitched aside, towards her partner. "I mean –gods, Ruby and Yang can tell you this, I almost bolted when we came back and I realized you were alive again."
His eyes held hers. Looking at him now, Pyrrha had to wonder how she had missed it –how what she'd known was just a façade of his gawky former self, how he actually had experience as a Huntsman.
Then again, that was natural, wasn't it? The human brain was designed to take things at face value. Pyrrha had met a boy who was obviously thrown by her presence. He had called her pretty, and the matter had been dropped. His social skills were still rough, but he had a perfectly ordinary reason for both that and for why he was so driven to make sure he would never lose teammates again. It made sense. There was no point to second-guess it.
The Jaune that she knew was a focused fighter who had neglected his personal relationship skills in order to focus on combat and survival. He was awkward with handling people, rather ineffectual a lot of the time, but there were moments in which he hardened, his eyes going steely and his back going straight. For a seventeen-year-old boy, the assumption was natural: it was flashes of the commanding spirit that he would grow into, the result of many years of training to protect himself and others.
All of the information Pyrrha had previously had about Jaune had pointed the same way… focused, dedicated, but still raw and slightly uncertain, a trainee Huntsman that had a lot of future potential but was currently still inexperienced and shaky.
It was only after Jinn had shown them all of those visions that Pyrrha realized that a lot of Jaune's more awkward mannerisms were fake, an attempt to recall how he had looked and acted back when he actually was seventeen, rather than his natural state. Only when she had something to compare it to did she realize that the steely Jaune was the real one, and his clumsier moments the façade.
But without that point of reference –without something else to know him by– how could she have possibly known that? How could she have possibly seen this without the larger context?
"We were –we were trying to give you what we had." Jaune continued earnestly, sliding his fingers through the sloppier haircut that Pyrrha realized that he still hadn't gotten used to. "It's not like we were happy about it."
"Whether you were happy or not, you still did it." Ren pointed out, a little coldly.
"We did it because we had to!" Blake snapped, showing an uncharacteristic flash of temper. She then wrapped her arms around herself, and only the fact that Pyrrha was so well-practiced at reading body language let her know that the Faunus's hands were trembling as she tucked them under her folded arms, clamping her hands closer to her body to further hide that telltale shaking.
"Do you know how I felt, talking to Ilia like I was before we left?" Blake asked as she directed her gaze towards the ground, her voice bitter. "I was manipulating her, I was using her feelings for me against her and even if it was to her benefit-"
That's a slippery slope to go down.
Blake didn't need to finish the words: Pyrrha knew them well.
"You saw what we saw about Ozpin." Blake continued after a hard swallow. "It's so hard to make good choices, and I- I have to live with the fact that I'm manipulating Ilia just like Adam did with me. It doesn't matter whether or not I think I'm better than him because I'm doing this with her best interests in mind instead of to my own benefit, I'm still making her do what I want, regardless of what she would normally think or do."
"That's why we brought you with us." Ruby said after a long, uncomfortable silence, her silver eyes blazing as she looked firmly into the eyes of Team JNPR, one by one. "Because the only reason we weren't telling you guys the whole and complete truth was that you wouldn't believe us without proof, and we couldn't risk you not taking us seriously. You're our friends, and that's if you're in the future or you're you, right now. We've seen what trying to do everything alone, trying to be the only person making the plans, does to a person, and we're not going to make the same mistakes. We trust you."
We trust you.
Three simple words, and Pyrrha bit her lip as she looked at the ground.
What had Jaune and the others done?
Jaune had come towards her with his hand open. He hadn't presumed on their past relationship: he had left –admittedly after some prodding– the decision to become partners entirely up to Pyrrha. Once he had become her partner, he had put his back against hers with unfailing devotion and spent almost every waking moment he could towards making sure she and the others were prepared –oh gods, she recognized the reason behind his abnormally-intense focus towards sharpening their skills now– for when Beacon was attacked. When he had lied to her, deceived her, it had been gently guiding her towards this very moment, when she learned everything. Jaune and the others could have left Pyrrha behind to guard their rooms when they came to Jinn: there was no strategic need for all of JNPR to be here, at this moment.
They had been brought anyways.
Her mind was drawn back, irresistibly, to the first counter-conspiracy meeting –where Jaune and all the others had invited everyone to come with them to Haven, without exception. Whether Pyrrha and the others had known it at the time, RWBY and Jaune had been placing themselves in a position of supreme vulnerability: the more people that came along on this mission, the more chances that they would ruin it. But Jaune and Ruby and the others had invited them anyways, because –because they were friends.
Because Jaune and the others didn't want to plan this, know this, alone.
Because they trusted them.
"I-" Pyrrha said, and swallowed as all eyes turned to her. She kept her gaze locked on Jaune, though, on her team leader and maybe-once-and-future-boyfriend. "I wanted you to have told me before this. You said you trust us? I…"
I trust you too.
"…you should have told me." she finished instead, weakly. Jaune caught her eye and nodded to her once, though, showing that he understood.
"As long as you cut that puppetmaster shit out, I'm good." Nora added, folding her arms across her chest and fixing them all with a semi-impartial glare. "No more orchestrating stuff without input from us –or at least, someone not from the future. No more deciding you guys know best for everyone unless we all put it to a vote."
"I think we can do that." Weiss said with a nervous little half-laugh. "Given Ironwood's example."
"Oh, do not remind me of that piece of shit General-"
Pyrrha glanced to Ren as Nora started to go off. His eyes were still fixed on the ground, conflict swimming within them. Carefully, bridging an emotional and physical distance that she would not have dared before Beacon, Pyrrha tentatively reached out to touch his shoulder, making him look at her.
"You don't have to accept their apologies." she said, her voice quiet. "No one would blame you for having your own opinion."
Nora paused in her ranting as everyone noticed this bit of byplay.
There was a long silence, and then Ren blew out a slow, measured breath.
"I don't forgive you for hiding the truth from us." he said at last, looking up at Jaune and the others with a firm and steady gaze. "But you haven't steered us wrong yet."
"So… we're cool?" Ruby asked tentatively, and Ren rolled his jaw.
"We're… acceptable."
"I can work with acceptable." Yang said cheerily, clapping her hands together, before looking around briskly. "So! We've got our news from Jinn, we've got Neopolitan firmly-ish on the side of good, and RWBY and JNPR are finally united against the future or whatever. What are we gonna do now?"
"I thought we were going to tell Ozpin about this." Pyrrha said, her hackles rising slightly in wariness, and Yang nodded.
"Well, obviously –but I mean how, and when, and who else, and what are we going to tell SSSNI and everyone at Beacon?"
Ah.
"Maybe we should be sitting down for this?" Weiss asked as NPR relaxed again, looking towards the humped rocks gathered around the edges of the platform. "After all, the Vault is a perfectly secure location with absolutely no chance of eavesdroppers, so we can talk about everything we need to without fear of being overheard… and I feel like that'll be a long discussion."
Everyone saw the sense in her suggestion at once, and Pyrrha swished her cape out of the way as she moved to sit on a mossy stone, seeing the others scatter themselves about the platform in front of the Vault.
"First things first, we gotta figure out what we're gonna tell everybody." Nora said, tossing a hand out from where she actually had the audacity to lean against the Vault door itself.
"Yeah, and since we don't have the Lamp or anything, we don't exactly have proof of what we're going to tell them." Jaune groaned, cradling his head between two hands. "What could we tell them that makes sense?"
"Truth is often stranger than fiction." Pyrrha agreed. "I… don't think we should lie to them, though."
"Some shading of the truth may be necessary." Ren said reluctantly.
Neopolitan –who seemed significantly more at ease with the group than before- proved that point exactly by spreading her arms from where she leaned against a rock as words that were crystalized out of her Semblance shimmered into the air between both hands.
Number one rookie mistake of cover stories is lying when you don't have to. She said. Liars change their stories to fit the situation: people telling the truth stay consistent. Liars add and change details. You should lie only as much as you absolutely have to.
"Neopolitan has a point." Blake said with utmost reluctance. "We can't afford to get caught up in a complicated lie, not with everything at stake. We can just… simplify, instead. There's a woman in charge of the Grimm, and her name is Salem. She's immortal, and her goal is to divide humanity and gather together the four Relics underneath the schools. Once she does that, the Brother Gods will be summoned to Remnant, and if they rule against us, the world will be wiped from existence."
"The Maidens open the Vaults." Nora continued, with a glance at Pyrrha that made her feel intensely uncomfortable. Now that she knew that so much of her identity would become tied to Maidens in a future that hadn't even happened yet… knowing that that had been how she died… it was a very odd sensation. "One Maiden per each Vault, and being a Maiden gives you magic powers beyond a Semblance, and the power can only be passed on to young women."
"We can explain the Maidens in full, I think." Ren said, looking calmer. "They're simple. Straightforward. The real problem is Jaune and Team RWBY… and the Relics too, I suppose."
"The bare bones of that is pretty simple too." Ruby said thoughtfully, running a finger over her tights. "Ozpin and Salem are fighting over the Relics. Both are immortal: Ozpin hops between bodies when his current host dies, and Salem is unkillable in her Grimmified body. They both can wield magic. The Relics are gifts the gods left behind after they abandoned Remnant, and if all four are put together, the God of Light and the God of Darkness will come back to Remnant and judge us. If they find us acceptable, they'll return magic to the world and stay with us. If they don't, they'll erase Remnant and everything on it. Ozpin wants to keep the Relics safe where they are, under the schools, until he can get humanity to a point where it seems like the Brother Gods might judge us favorably. Salem wants to divide us so that when she summons the gods, they'll destroy everything in the world and her with it, because she's tired of being immortal and hates everyone and everything."
"This isn't really addressing us." Weiss said irritably after a moment, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "And as we've been rightfully reminded-" She nodded to Pyrrha and the others. "-that is something that we owe it to our companions and allies to discuss."
There was a moment of thoughtful silence.
"We come from a bad future where we all died?" Yang finally suggested after a minute or so.
Hurtful, but accurate. Neopolitan sent into the air in a sparkle of pink Aura shards.
"I mean, it is pretty simple when you get down to brass tacks." Jaune sighed, scratching the back of his head. "Not sure that everyone'll believe us, though."
"They have no choice." Pyrrha said firmly. "People's minds take the path of least resistance, and you'll have us to back you up that this is the absolute, unembellished truth. We went to find this artifact that gave us answers: these are the answers we got."
"Plus it's not like they can take any other answers." Nora pointed out, raising one hand from her knee to point at RWBYNJ. "I mean, not unless they come ask Jinn themselves."
"So we've decided what we're going to tell everyone at Beacon." Ruby said with a deep sigh of satisfaction. Everyone glanced to Neo as Ruby turned towards her. "What about you?"
Neopolitan sucked her teeth for a moment, thinking, before she used her Semblance again to create words in the air.
I can tell Roman that I found some allies that'll help us break away from Cinder. Not sure if we should tell him anything else yet, though.
"You don't trust him?" Ren asked, and Neopolitan shot him a dirty look.
It's a matter of security. You don't put all your eggs in one basket, and you don't tell someone exactly how you're planning to betray a mutual enemy unless they NEED to know. I trust Roman with my life, but they can't torture any information out of him if he simply doesn't have it to begin with.
"Fair point." Pyrrha said, feeling a little sick at the idea of torture. Deliberately hurting someone else for information was such a horrible idea… especially when torture almost never actually worked as an information-gathering technique. People in pain would say anything to make the pain stop, and their torturers would often have no way to verify the information as true, if it couldn't be proven until it was actually put to use. It was just cruel, cruel and senseless.
"So we'll tell SSSNI and Penny about… this." Blake said after a moment of slightly awkward hesitation. "That means there'll be fourteen of us aware of this problem and able to counteract it. How are we going to start doing that –other than talking to Ozpin, I mean?"
"We planned to have Ruby tell him about… well, everything, when we got back from our supposed camping trip." Jaune said, waving his hands as though to encompass the literal years of history and "everything" that Pyrrha and the others were without. "Ruby has silver eyes, which pretty much automatically disqualifies her from willingly working for Salem, so he'll trust her at face value more than most of the rest of us."
Pyrrha shivered at the willingly, at the reminder of that terrible Hound.
"That's pretty much where our planning peters out, though." Ruby admitted, wrapping her arms around her curled knees and setting her chin atop them. "I mean, we weren't even 100% sure that this wasn't all a hallucination or something, so we, uh, kinda put off our plans for the future until after we figured all this out."
"You'd best start planning." Ren said, and even though his voice was stern Pyrrha caught the barest hint of a smirk on his face.
Given how often we ran circles around the academies, I do NOT want Ozpin to know about me and Roman. Neo sent up with a frown. His security's got more holes than a net. You can tell him everything but the fact that I came back, and that we're more-or-less working with you now.
"Fair." Nora said. "So we update the headmaster, and then… what? Work with him? Cause I gotta say, you guys do not have the best track record in that department."
RWBY and Jaune all winced in guilt, looking aside with cringing expressions.
"I mean… historically Ozpin didn't exactly prevent the Fall of Beacon." Blake said gingerly, and Pyrrha wrapped her gloved arms around her body, hugging herself a little as a chill slid down her spine. It was so unnatural, to hear the words the Fall of Beacon drop so naturally from someone else's lips. For Blake and the others, it was audibly just… history, a receding blip on the radar, a horrific catastrophe that had gutted them but had also nonetheless happened years ago. They had grown used to managing in a world where the Fall of Beacon was a statement of fact, and that was so, so wrong.
"Still, we have information that he didn't back then." Ruby said bravely. "He might be able to use it this time around."
"Or he might fuck it up even worse." Yang said.
"But we also know how well lying and working around our supposed allies goes." Weiss countered, with a scowl in the general direction of Atlas outside the walls of the mountain. There was a moment of grudging silence on both sides, with Nora broke with an explosive, mostly-theatrical sigh.
"Geez, pretty thin tightrope we're walking here, huh?" she groaned, head tilting back to thunk against the Vault door. "Can't trust the headmasters too much, but we can't go off and do our own thing either. We need to find our own little grey area to operate in. Like superspies!"
"You're not exactly wrong." Jaune said, with a sheepish little laugh, clearly thinking of all the sneaking around that he and RWBY had had to do thus far. "We can do both, right guys? We go to Ozpin and tell him what's going to happen, and work with him to try and take Cinder and the others down, but there's nothing that says we can't take our own independent line at the same time."
"Technically we already are." Pyrrha pointed out, and nodded to Neopolitan when everyone looked at her in surprise. "I don't think the headmaster would exactly endorse us allying with criminals like this."
"Eh, Ozpin can get optimistic at the weirdest of things." Yang said dismissively, but nodded. "Still, fair point. I mean, it's not like any of us would really just accept sitting back and letting Oz take the reins after hearing all this, right?"
Pyrrha opened her mouth to modestly deny it, to say that they really were just students and they really shouldn't be getting themselves involved in something this big if the headmasters of multiple schools were working on the problem- but then the words wouldn't come as the image of herself on the ruined tower, a black glass arrow sinking into her chest, flashed through her mind.
Can you really leave things like this? the glassy green eyes of her other self asked, vacant and disbelieving as the real Pyrrha watched the image of a champion gasp out her last, and Pyrrha involuntarily touched a gloved hand to her heart, where the arrow would have been. Even knowing everything that she knew now, would she have the heart to refuse if and when Professor Ozpin and the others came to ask her to take up the mantle of the Fall Maiden?
Seeing what she had seen, knowing what she now knew, did she have the heart to thrust that burden onto someone else, someone far less prepared than she was? Or would she do as she had always done, try to staunchly shoulder the burden alone and power forward, helping people as the Huntress she longed to be, no matter the cost to herself?
Pyrrha thought of the raw hurt in Jaune's voice as he cursed Cinder's smug and callous words at Haven, the rage in Ren's tone as he confronted the Ace Ops over their idea of replacing team members in Atlas.
She knew grief when she saw it, heard it.
Could she inflict that hurt on other people? Could she choose what was best for herself, what offered herself the highest chance of survival, and in turn doom someone else and their team to being Cinder's targets instead? Could Pyrrha live with herself if she did that, even if she survived?
"No."
Nora's voice shook Pyrrha out of her reverie, and she realized that they had all been silent for a long time as Nora's hand curled into a clenched fist atop her knee.
"We're not backing out of this." Nora finished firmly, and gave the others a sharp nod. "No matter what."
Ruby nodded back to her, then heaved a huge breath and bit her lip, looking at the grassy stone.
"So, we need to plan out our next moves." she said. "Starting with what we're gonna do tomorrow."
"We need to call Sun and the others, let them know we got through everything safely." Jaune pointed out. "We can do that in the morning."
"That Watts guy was an Atlesian scientist. Since we know he's involved now, someone in Atlas should be made aware." Ren said. "Penny's father seemed level-headed, and he's the best person to counter anything Watts does."
"I've been gently prodding my sister to try and induce some familial feelings between the two of us and my brother, Whitley, so that I can catch any gossip coming out of Atlas." Weiss said. "I could induce Penny to drop by and drag him out for some social bonding by telling her that I can't visit Whitley in the manor on my own, and her father's pharmacy in Mantle would be a much more secure place to talk over what we've learned here."
"Yeah, but that breaks our cover of saying you came with us for camping trip purposes." Nora pointed out, cradling her chin.
"She's a Schnee." Blake said, her mouth curling up in a teasing smile. "She can have a horrified attack of modesty once she realizes that there'll be dirt and bugs involved."
"I am not that fragile!" Weiss barked, her face turning pink, and everyone else laughed. "B-but it is a good excuse."
"Okay, so going with that… we call Sun and the others and let them know that everything went through safely tomorrow. Then we go to Argus to visit with me and Pyrrha's relatives –Weiss can realize how much camping sucks there and phone in to Penny and Atlas." Jaune said, busy shaping the idea with his hands as his eyes went distant. "The rest of us can camp our way back to the edge of Anima as per our original plan, and Neo can… uh, probably go back sooner?"
Probably at the same time the Schnee clutches her pearls and scampers back to Atlas. I was only supposed to be gone for a few days, after all.
"Right, Neo'll go back to Vale then, and tell Torchwick that she's found some allies that'll help the two of them wriggle out from under Cinder's heel." Jaune continued briskly. "Meanwhile, Weiss will be talking with Penny and her dad about cyber security and stuff while we work our way back to the coast. We'll call Weiss and SSSNI once we make it to the boat-train, and then we can pull everyone back to Beacon before break ends. Once we do that, we'll run our story past everyone else, then go tell Ozpin."
"…Not the other way around?" Pyrrha asked hesitantly, and Jaune blinked. She swallowed a little, then gestured to herself, Ren, and Nora. "I'm just saying, we can't exactly bring any proof of what we heard here with us, so it might be better to tell Ozpin first and then get some sort of tangible evidence out of that."
"Good point." Ruby sighed, slumping a little against her rock. "Maybe we can think on that some more while we make our way across Anima?"
"Ruby has a point." Weiss agreed, nodding to her partner. "While we certainly can't afford to slack off, these are important decisions that deserve some weighty consideration. Splitting the party that knows things between me and the rest of you will also ensure that if something… happens to one of us, we can still make sure at least some people can get through with our message."
"Right. So, just to recap, we'll call the others to confirm mission success, then go to Argus either tomorrow or tomorrow morning. After some suitable relative-visiting, RBY and JNPR will begin making their way to the coast via a camping trip, as per our alibi." Blake said, ticking off points on her fingers. "Weiss and Neopolitan will split off from the party at the same time, with Neopolitan going back to Vale to tell Torchwick that she's found an out while Weiss meets up with Penny in Atlas. Once the rest of us make it to the coast, we'll call Weiss and Penny in and take the boat-train back to Vale. Once everyone gets there, we'll decide whether to tell Ozpin or our friends the story first, and then do so."
"Seems like a pretty solid plan." Yang said, and sucked in a deep, slow breath. "And then, depending on what Oz and the teachers wanna do, we can start making our own extra plans from there."
"Oh shoot!"
Sun suddenly leaped up from his place reclining on his bed, making Ilia jump from where she was slowly making her way through a textbook at one of the desks. The past few days had been pretty lazy: she'd sparred with the members of Team SSSN (she refused to acknowledge herself as part of Team SSSNI) a bit to keep her skills sharp –learning as she did that the Huntsman definition of daily practice was a lot more grueling than her own– and been press-ganged into several video-game tournaments and a movie marathon that lasted long into the night.
Urgh.
The movie-marathon had been a bit too testosterone-laden for Ilia's taste –full of energy drinks, greasy takeout food, and popcorn, with tons of unnecessary shouting at the screen for taste. Sun and his team hadn't been that bad –and there hadn't been alcohol involved, thank the gods– but it was still several shades more teenage-boy-masculine than Ilia could enjoy… and even as a Huntsman trainee, Ilia still wasn't sure how Sun was able to eat that much pizza and still maintain those impeccable abs.
Perhaps it was a Semblance.
In any case, they had spread out a bit over the course of the days that she'd been at Beacon. When shunting an extra bed into SSSN(I)'s guest dorm had been vetoed as a bad idea, they had instead compromised by splitting the team into three and two, with Sun and Neptune sleeping in Team RWBY's dorm alongside Ilia as a guard –for her and the room both– while Sage and Scarlet held down Team JNPR's room.
Penny had enthusiastically volunteered to stand guard in Team SSSN's assigned room, and she had displayed enough disturbingly accurate knowledge of Atlesian special ops tactics that everyone had unanimously –and silently– agreed to leave her as sole guardian of the room.
Meanwhile, Ilia had definitely not had a slight attack of conscience when she realized that she could sleep in Blake's bed.
And she had certainly steadfastly refused to even look at it afterwards. She wasn't some kind of creep, and Blake hadn't given her permission to use her bed… even if a guilty, tiny part of Ilia really, really wanted to. Unrequited crushes were a bitch like that.
"What's the problem?"
From where he had been sprawled with much less qualms for personal space on the rickety, rope-strung bed that crouched like a fat spider in the air above its lower brethren, Neptune stuck his thumb under the spine of a comic draped across his face, lifting said comic to peep out from underneath. He'd been napping, and before that reading, even though Ilia was 99% sure that he was supposed to be studying, or practicing, or, well, doing anything but slowly vegetate in someone else's dorm room.
"Our glorious leaders are calling!" Sun said, fumbling in his jeans for his buzzing Scroll. Ilia's shoulders tensed as she involuntarily looked towards the door, measuring it with her eyes. She didn't want to flee, obviously, but –should she get the others? Check the security of the room to make sure they wouldn't be overheard for this important call? Stand outside because it wasn't meant for her?
Sun, heedless of all these many items of tactical import, flicked his thumb across the screen to open the call.
"Hey guys!" he shouted excitedly into the video call. "How's Mistral?"
"Eh, tiring." came a squeaky voice that Ilia identified as that Ruby girl –the one that called herself Blake's team leader. "I'm just calling to let you know that we made it to Haven okay and we, uh, totally saw that movie you guys recommended in the theater near the academy. It was great! We learned so much!"
Neptune caught Ilia's eye, and before she could glance away, offered her a huge thumbs-up and a tooth-sparkling grin. She huffed a little and refocused on Sun, who was cheering at the screen.
"Whoo! I knew you guys would find it –that theater is the best!" he said, flawlessly playing along with Ruby's cover story. Ilia had come to notice that about Sun: he may be a bit of an idiot, but he was quite competent on his own ground, and he threw himself wholeheartedly into every endeavor he took part in. He may lack for brains a bit and make up for the difference in sheer enthusiasm, but no one could say that he wasn't skilled at being a supportive team player. "So what, you guys are heading off on your camping trip now?"
"We're gonna go to Argus first and visit with family –but then we'll be camping our way back. You guys better keep yourself sharp in practice, because we have some great news to share when we get back, and we'll be toughened up with weeks of Grimm fighting!"
"Alright!" Sun exclaimed, tail lashing like a storm-blown piece of rope in his excitement. "See you then!"
Before Ilia could ask him to maybe put Blake or someone else on the line, Sun ended the call, and leaped off the bed to stand in the middle of the dorm room with both hands on his hips.
"This is awesome! Man, I can't wait until they tell us what they found!" he said enthusiastically to Neptune and Ilia both, stowing his Scroll before taking a ready stance and jabbing his fists several times, shadow-boxing against an invisible opponent. "Team SSSNI's gonna kick some ass!"
Ilia grumbled a little, low in her throat. She felt… out-of-place, here. She had been a good fighter in the White Fang, but she wasn't getting a lot of the stuff in the textbooks Team RWBY had left scattered about their dorm, and in the spars against Sun and his team, Ilia didn't exactly come out shining. They might not be openly racist –and really, having a Faunus as their team leader probably negated a lot of that– but they also didn't hold back against her at all, and Ilia had quickly learned that even with Aura, fighting against qualified Huntsman trainees hurt.
It made sense, she tried to soothe her ego. Hunter academies accepted trainees at 17 and above, and preparatory combat schools like Signal took four years to train their candidates, which meant that you started at 13. Most serious Hunter candidates started training even younger –as young as ten. Unlocking your Aura was hard, and figuring out a Semblance was even harder: the more years you had to put towards that goal, the likelier it was that you'd reach it before you got too old to actually use whatever Semblance you unlocked. Ilia was good, but she'd had a mostly-civilian life up until her teenage years –no training at all until she joined the White Fang. Even disregarding talent, she had a lot of ground to catch up on.
And to further the gap even more, most Hunter families raised Hunter children: some people would have informal "training" that began as soon as they were born, especially if their Semblance was hereditary. People outside settlements or in groups like the White Fang had much the same training, but it was all practical, dirty tricks passed from one survivor to another –no formal system, and certainly no theories. Individuals from those groups had much the same base level of training as Hunter children when they joined the academies.
So while Ilia had her Aura, she hadn't even gotten close to unlocking her Semblance, and her fighting was more geared towards disarm-and-neutralize than what Sun's team were trained to do, which was subdue and kill. Hunter academies might focus on training their students to kill Grimm, which were almost always quadrupeds, but they didn't shirk at teaching bipedal combat either, since any human or Faunus that stood up to a Hunter was, by definition, someone dangerous to be taken down.
After all, Ilia thought with an inner sneer, criminals had Aura and Semblances too.
Criminals like Blake –or Adam.
Adam made something funny twist in Ilia's stomach when she thought of him, nowadays. He was inspiring, a true warrior who lived and breathed and would die for Faunus rights, but… but Ilia wasn't on the same side as him, anymore, not quite. She hated the idea of calling herself the enemy of someone, anyone in the White Fang, but… but Ilia knew that Adam would hunt her down without mercy, now that he knew that she'd been working against the efforts of his forces in Vale. By any definition, that made them enemies.
It was okay though, Ilia reassured herself. Adam had turned traitor first. He had turned his back on them, sold them all out for the promises of some… human. He'd gone and made deals with the same sketchy, nebulous forces that were drawing their net around the Hunter academies, turned the Vale branch of the White Fang into their minions and pawns. Blake wouldn't lie about that: it might even be part of the reason why she had left. Blake cared deeply about Faunus rights too –a far more gentle passion, somehow, than Adam's fiery rhetoric. She wouldn't stand for such hypocrisy, and if she knew that she couldn't change Adam's mind or keep him from leading the Vale sect down a bad path, she would've cut ties on the spot.
Blake's heart was still with them, Ilia knew.
Still, the idea of Adam –fierce, resolute, headstrong, brutal Adam– locking blades with her was a disquieting one. Ilia might know about his Semblance and how it worked, but that didn't make the idea of facing off with him any less intimidating, with or without Huntsman reinforcements. She swallowed, her finger tapping restlessly against the cover of the thick textbook she'd been trying to parse.
"Can- can we get a head start on that?" she asked, drawing the attention of the other two. She focused on Sun. "I mean, you and me –can we spar a bit, right now?"
Sun brightened.
"Sure thing!" he chimed enthusiastically, and looked towards Neptune. "You can tell the guys about our super-secret commando message, and then we can all go to the training rooms-"
"No."
Ilia felt her freckles darkening a little under their scrutiny as Sun and Neptune both sent her puzzled looks.
"I'd, ah, rather just spar in a solo match." she lied, avoiding the latter's gaze. Sun looked at Neptune and shrugged.
"Eh, well, whatever man." Sun continued. He offered a fistbump to his partner, who accepted. "You guys can find a different room, I guess. Oh, and uh, someone should probably check on Penny on the way to make sure she hasn't, like, died or something. I'm pretty sure she hasn't left our room to even eat."
Neptune mimed a sharp salute and headed out, and Ilia grabbed her Lightning Lash as Sun scooped up his collapsible nunchucks/staff. She kept behind the legitimate student as they made their way to Beacon's training halls, Sun waving and smiling to pretty much everyone they passed on the way, calling out greetings and responding to quips. Ilia both was and wasn't grateful for that, as it helped him/them blend a lot, but also drew attention. Their excuse for her being here was thin, and if a teacher ever actually bothered to double-check it…
She popped into the empty training room quickly, trying to resist the urge to fade into the background –literally– as her skin itched with the urge to change. She kept quiet as Sun punched in the code for the Aura reader that would track their progress, and hopped up onto the podium behind him as it dinged and the Dust lights changed color.
"So, you still not comfortable with the rest of the guys yet?" Sun asked as he extended his staff and turned to face her, displaying a shocking change of sudden perceptiveness. Ilia flushed a little as she readied her whip in response.
"They're from Mistral." she said, and he blinked several times.
"…So?"
"It's Mistral." Ilia explained, disgusted with the reemergence of his obliviousness. "They're not as bad as Atlas, but they don't care about Faunus at all."
"Eh." Sun's shoulders flexed within his open white shirt as he shrugged, and Ilia watched the muscular display warily. She'd already been on the receiving end of several strikes from Sun during their spars, and those abs weren't just for show. "The guys aren't like that."
Ilia gritted her teeth in frustration at his willful blindness.
"How do you know that, though?" she hissed, slashing Lightning Lash with a little leap forward as he quickly twisted out of her way, even though she'd been a bit unsportsmanlike and failed to warn him of when they started.
"It's my team." Sun answered, turning on his heel and driving his staff down as Ilia quickly turned her lunge into a somersault, tumbling out of the way before rolling to her feet. "I'd think I'd know if they hated my guts or something."
"How do you know they're not just thinking racist stuff behind your back, though?" Ilia asked, swatting her weapon at him as it extended into a whip. "Laughing at you?"
"Uh, 'cause when they make fun of me, it's to my face." Sun said with a disingenuous grin, spinning his staff to deflect her strike. "C'mon, man, you've seen them roasting me."
Scarlet in particular had a very barbed wit, Ilia remembered. She pushed aside the fact that she might be starting to like the human, though. Anyone as cynical as Scarlet probably had a bone to pick with Faunus somehow, in some way.
"S-still." Ilia continued stubbornly. "It's just- you're one Faunus among three humans. They've never done anything to offend you?"
"Dude." Sun somersaulted over her head and landed behind her, staff swinging out for her back and striking against her rapier as she frantically twisted and bodylocked, her leading heel skidding backwards from the force of his thrust. "They're not Grimm in disguise."
"They're humans."
Sun blinked his guileless blue eyes, before he opened his mouth and-
"Hey, that's racist."
"Ugh!" Ilia leaped back in disgust and flicked her telescoping rapier at him as it crackled with Lightning Dust, and Sun nimbly dodged out of the way. "Why are you so determined to take their side?!"
"Why are you so determined to pin my team as a bunch of crazy racists?" Sun asked in a tone of utmost reason, his expression nonchalant as he continued to sway between her jabbing, darting attacks. "Not every human's an asshole, y'know."
"You don't know that!" Ilia cried in frustration. "You don't- they'll just hide it from you and until they can stab you in the back!"
Something flickered across Sun's face, and then he suddenly put his hands together as he flared yellow –and then two shells of his Aura flickered out from him, lunging to either side of Ilia as she stumbled backwards in shock. The glowing outline of Sun on her left swiped his staff under her feet, the other blocked her slash with Lightning Lash, wrenching her arm to the side, and the final, real Sun jumped through the gap with one leg outstretched, his sneaker-clad foot slamming into her chest with enough force –even through her Aura– to knock Ilia flat on her back.
Sun landed with his feet on either side of her ribs, crouching over her as the two glowing afterimages faded away and he lightly pressed his staff against her wrist, pinning the arm that held Lightning Lash to the ground.
"I'm sensing some hostility here, Ilia." Sun said, planting his chin in his free hand and his elbow on his bent knee as he looked down at her. Ilia blinked several times, staring up at him in shock, and then groaned.
"Are you really trying to- to therapize me right now?" she asked, her head thunking back against the floor in exasperation.
"Mmm. Well, you do got lots of hostility in ya." Sun commented, rubbing a finger across his chin. Ilia snarled and wiggled under him a little, her feet kicking out futilely, but Sun's legs were bent enough that he had her effectively pinned to the ground, not to mention that he was still holding her arm down with his staff. "Seriously, Ilia, what's the deal? I mean, what makes a girl like you join the White Fang?"
"That's none of your business." Ilia said, glaring at him.
"I mean, it kinda is when you accuse my team of being a buncha creeps." Sun said, flinging his hand away from his chin as he shrugged down at her. "Not to mention all the conspiracy stuff we're dealing with. Bad guys could use it against us and all that."
Ilia grumbled low in her throat, looking at his expectant face, then glancing away.
"…I went to a prep school in Atlas." she said reluctantly. It was easier to say this when she wasn't looking at him. "But to blend in, I couldn't let anyone know I was a Faunus, which meant that under no circumstances could I change my colors. It worked fine for a while, except then my parents died in a mine accident, and when my friends heard about it, they… snickered."
"Ooh." Sun winced. "Yeah, my trust would go rock-bottom at that one too."
"It gets worse. When I turned blue with sadness and started crying, they were all scared of me." Ilia ground her teeth, still without looking back at him. "Of me. We were friends, we'd laughed and played together, and I was only a kid like them, but the second I showed that I was different, the second I showed that I was one of those 'dirty, lying animals,' they treated me like a threat."
Her fist clenched, and her fingers tightened on the stock of Lightning Lash.
"So I made myself a threat they should be scared of." Ilia said defiantly, turning to face him. "I broke their teeth, and then I joined the White Fang. So there."
Sun clicked his tongue against his teeth, nodding his head slowly, before he swung his leg around and sat down on her right side, lifting his staff in the same movement and setting it down beside him.
"That sucks." he said as Ilia hesitantly sat up beside him, rubbing her wrist with her free hand. "Still, good to see you gave 'em what-for. I wouldn't have stood for that either."
She bobbed her head. It was good to see that he agreed with her –it made sense that a fellow Faunus would.
"Still, that was them, and that was in Atlas." Sun said, leaning back to brace both hands behind himself. "Most people aren't like that. Like in Vacuo –you earn your stripes there, and people don't care if you're a Faunus or human or what if you can take care of yourself."
Ilia hummed her acknowledgment. The White Fang barely did anything in Vacuo for exactly that reason: no reason to fight against prejudice that simply wasn't there on a wide, institutionalized scale. Certainly, they'd need a strong and compelling reason to increase their presence in that sand-ridden deathtrap of a kingdom.
"Anyways, most Hunters are like that." Sun gently punched her shoulder in a companionable way. "We fight Grimm, not each other. If you can handle your weapon and take down some monsters, nobody cares what features you got. Certainly nobody on my team."
"What about on Blake's team?" Ilia mumbled. "I mean, she has a Schnee."
"Eh, Weiss offered to pay for a hotel room, and she gave you all that Dust." Sun said, nodding to her weapon as Ilia self-consciously tucked it away, out of his view. The Schnee girl had given her a number of vials of strong, high-grade purified Lightning Dust before she'd left, and it had taken Ilia a long time to do anything but stare at them on her borrowed desk.
"She can't buy my acceptance like she buys everything else." Ilia grumbled, resentment flaring in her again.
"Oooooor, maybe she's giving you money and things because that's the only way she knows how to show affection?" Sun asked hesitantly. "I mean, she seems pretty chill with Blake and Blake seems pretty chill with her, and Blake was ex-White Fang too, right? She'd be on her like that if Weiss racist."
Uncomfortably, he had a point.
"Plus, that Jacques Schnee guy is probably an asshole dad." Sun continued, scratching his cheek. "I mean, he's a real bastard in business, can't imagine he flips on a coin and becomes Mr. Nice Guy when he goes home. Maybe Weiss doesn't really know how to make friends beyond throwing money at them, because she knows everyone likes money?"
Ilia grumbled low in her throat at the idea, and then squeaked a moment later when Sun threw an arm around her and squeezed her close to his side.
"Anyways, that's enough of that!" he said cheerfully. "You and me, we gotta practice to make sure we're lean, mean, fighting machines by the time Team RWBY comes back! And if you still feel uncomfy around the guys, we can just hang out even more! You can have a girls night with Penny while we have a guys night by ourselves! Heck, maybe we can borrow an office and you and me can grill them good-cop-bad-cop style on whether or not they're racist! Ooh!"
Sun's eyes shone as he turned to her and grinned, grabbing Ilia by both hands.
"We could get a super-bright lamp and shine it on them like those TV interrogation rooms!" he exclaimed, and jumped to his feet. Ilia hastily scrambled up after him and grabbed his wrist as Sun impulsively moved towards the door, knowing that she was only barely holding the other Faunus back from rushing off and finding, in short order: an abandoned office, a bright desk lamp, and probably some cop-like props to wear while he and Ilia "interrogated" his teammates.
"Let's… just spar for now." Ilia said slowly as she let go of his wrist. Sun turned back to her, pouting slightly, and Ilia felt an odd urge to smile as she pulled out her weapon.
Somehow, she felt better.
Penny was absolutely ecstatic!
Not only had she made a number of good friends at Beacon, and been trusted with the incredibly important mission to make sure that Team SSSNI's dorm room stayed safe and free of any interlopers, she had also received the good news that Teams RWBY and JNPR had successfully recruited their ally on the other side, made it to Haven, and gotten their crucial evidence!
But all of that news and excitement paled against the momentous fact that, at this very moment, she and Ilia were engaged in a girls' night sleepover!
Penny squealed happily into her pillow, kicking her legs behind herself. She had been intensely monitoring SSSNI's dorm room for the past 72 hours, neither shutting down nor leaving the room, and it was so nice to know that she hadn't been forgotten by the others, who needed to sleep and eat and all those other real-person things. Even if she was on highest alert, tracking the tiniest air currents and eyeing every fly that soared into the room, it got boring after a while. It was good to know that the others were still thinking of her.
"You are marvelously good at dodging." she told Ilia, lifting her face and looking at the other girl, who was sprawled on a nearby dorm bed, panting raggedly with flushed cheeks. Penny took note of that and upped her internal fans, jerking her chest back and forth at an increased rate to simulate panting of her own. "I could never!"
"Are you made of steel or something?" Ilia gasped, turning towards her with glassy eyes. "Did you have your Aura up during a pillow fight?"
Penny gulped.
"I-I did not!" she said, and then paused. However unsportsmanlike it may be, if the alternative was the truth… "I-I mean, I did! I am certainly not made of steel, iron, or any other metallic material!"
She hiccupped, hiding her face in the pillow as she peered guiltily over its edge at her sleepover partner. Ilia, unfortunately, did not seem convinced, still panting raggedly as she looked at Penny with narrowed eyes.
"That's…" she began, then sighed, closing her eyes. "Ugh, whatever. Whichever story makes you happy."
"Definitely not the metal one. I am not a robot." Penny said cheerfully, and hiccupped again. "W-would you like to paint our nails now? That is an important component of sleepovers, right?"
"You don't know?" Ilia asked skeptically, opening one eye.
"I have not had any female friends before now." Penny admitted, and then reconsidered and amended her statement. "I have not had any friends my age before now."
Both of Ilia's eyes snapped open, the Faunus looking at her in shocked surprise.
"You… didn't?"
Penny lowered her gaze to the floor between the beds, still kicking her feet gently. It wasn't weird that she hadn't had any friends in the short time she'd been alive. All of the important basic knowledge that 17-year-old Huntress trainees should have learned in school had been uploaded onto her personal network, but that didn't exactly include interpersonal social relationships. She knew how they worked –knew that to shake hands was to be cordial, to smile was to be happy, to frown was to be unwelcoming– but she hadn't actually experienced any of it before she was sent to Vale.
Her father was friendly, and kind, and Penny was grateful that they had immediately formed the characteristic bond between parent and child, but… she hadn't really interacted with anyone her own age. General Ironwood was polite and calm, but Penny mostly interacted with him under the circumstances of her annual progress reports. Everyone else in the military was stiff and professional, not really the sort of people you could or should make friends with. That would be distracting them from their duty, after all, even if their duty was to keep an eye on her.
But then her social competence was approved as high enough to let her interact with the general public, and Penny had been sent without escorts to the Vytal Festival. She had been nervous –pleased, yes, but so nervous! After all, she'd been interacting only with military people up until now, and the documentaries she watched with her father generally had it be known that military people were more difficult to interact with. What if she used those few personal experiences as her roadmap to interacting with civilians, and she messed it up somehow?!
In a way, she sort've had. She'd seen a blond Faunus boy bounding across the rooftops pursued by several policemen on the street, and immediately engaged the appropriate protocols. He was under pursuit, which argued a crime had been committed, which meant that as a future Huntress and protector of humanity, it was Penny's job to assist them in subduing and restraining him without any injuries/fatalities.
She had therefore launched herself off in hot pursuit, quickly outpacing the two policemen, and had caught up to the Faunus –who was, of course, Sun– in an alleyway. She had announced his rights prior to arrest, as was proper, but then Sun had hastily corrected her, explaining that he was a Huntsman cadet attending the festival, and his friends had dared him to stow away on a boat. Penny had accepted the wallet he'd thrown over, opening it up to check his student ID and other credentials, and then quickly handed it back and apologized for her mistake.
Sun had taken it in stride, and Penny's heart had near burst with pride when he then threw an arm over her shoulders and offered to tour the city with her as a fellow Hunter trainee, realizing that somehow, she had met her first friend. She had agreed eagerly, of course, and then the number of her friends had rapidly blossomed as she ran into Blake and Yang and got pulled into their conspiracy situation with the others.
But this was really the first time she had been interacting with people her age, ever, and Penny felt her shoulders curling as she thought of how she might lose that when she went back to Atlas after the festival.
"My father works as a technician very high up in the Atlas military." Penny explained, sticking with her mandated cover story. "My mother died when I was born, so I had to stick with him all the time when he was at work growing up. I did not have any friends, because there were no other children with me at the military bases."
She looked over at Ilia and beamed.
"But now I do! I'm allowed to do whatever I want until the Vytal Festival, and I've made so very many friends!" she gushed, kicking her feet faster. "One of my very first girl friends!"
"R-right." Ilia looked slightly flattered, and she sat up. "You… really don't care that I'm a Faunus, though? Even when you're from Atlas?"
Penny blinked and tilted her head slightly, pursing her lips.
"Does being a Faunus impede your ability to be my friend?" she asked thoughtfully, and Ilia choked. "That does not seem very logical."
Oh!
Wait!
Penny understood the other girl's trepidation –Ilia was a former member of the White Fang, and as someone presumably raised in the Atlas military, it would naturally be Penny's inclination to arrest her for various crimes.
"Do not worry, Ilia my friend!" she hastened to reassure her. "You have proven your desire to help people and so I would have no reason to take disciplinary legal actions against you! In fact, should any of your former comrades act against you, you may count on me to stand by as your defense!"
Ilia blinked at her a few times.
"You'd… help me?" she asked uncertainly, and Penny drooped a little. Oops, technical terms again.
"Of course I would!" she said. "You are my friend, and I'd defend you against anything you needed me to."
"Riiiiight…" Ilia's eyes slid aside, her expression somewhat skeptical.
"But that is not important right now!" Penny slammed her fist (gently) against the cushion of the mattress as she sat up, her green eyes sparkling. "We are engaged in a sleepover, which means we should be painting our nails, and trying on clothes, and talking about cute boys!"
"I'm a lesbian."
"And cute girls!" Penny amended brightly. "It is… supposed to be a scale, right? From one to ten? What number am I?"
"Ashklf!"
Penny blinked in concern as Ilia shuddered and collapsed against the bed, her eyes going blank. Hmm. That was odd. Penny thought that she was the only one who could suffer from internal processing errors…
"Ilia?" she asked, unwrapping her arms from her pillow and sitting up on her stomach. If Ilia was having a medical issue, Penny was authorized to give AED shocks and limited first aid, but with her heavier metal body and lack of oxygen-filled lungs, she wasn't allowed to give CPR.
"YOU DON'T ASK THAT DIRECTLY!" Ilia finally squealed as she flailed around a little, apparently dislodging whatever invisible obstruction that had been in her throat and making her choke.
"I don't?" Penny asked. "How am I to know whether or not I am cute, then? You said we would talk about cute girls, and I am certainly a girl. This is important. How else would I know if I qualify?"
"Oh gods." Ilia gently thumped her head against her mattress, before taking a deep breath and sitting up. "Okay, Penny, we've got a lot of ground to cover. Atlesian or not, I can't let you go around like… like this. I just can't."
Penny gasped excitedly, bringing herself up on her knees as she clutched her pillow to her chest like a teddy bear.
"Are we going to do makeovers?" she asked with shining eyes, practically whispering the word of hallowed sleepover/girls'-night legend. Ilia raked a hand through her bangs as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
"Yeah." she sighed wearily. "Something like that, anyways. If I'm going to be stuck thwarting a conspiracy with you, we need to make sure you're more socially-competent than… uh, now."
If Penny wasn't entirely mechanical, her eyes would've been filling with tears.
"ILIA!" she sobbed, throwing the pillow aside to tackle her truest, her bestest, and her kindest friend to the ground with a cry and a crack of Aura. "You're amazing! You're incredible! I can't believe I ever lived without friends like you!"
"Okay, okay, gods!" Ilia wiggled futilely beneath Penny, frantically smacking her hand against her side. Wait, wasn't that a training move to let someone know that you surrendered… oops. She must be hugging too tight again. Penny let go and sat up, letting Ilia heave and gasp as her face turned from blue to brown again.
"F-first things first," Ilia wheezed. "Let's work on regulating your strength…"