Chapter Nineteen: Like a Sledgehammer to the Face

(Ryker pov)

I groaned stepping out of the shower, it was the weekend and Weiss and Ruby went out to buy more Dust, and Blake had left to go hide in the library, leaving me to myself for the first time since waking up. My first week back in school had been interesting. All of my teachers had been more than accommodating, and Professor Goodwhich had even told me that I would be excused from fighting till I made my new weapon. I still needed to ask Ruby for help, she was crazy about weapons.

I wrap my towel around myself, covering from my chest down to my knees. Never understood guys who just wrapped their towels around their waist, then again I had always been awkward about my chest. It just felt more intimate to show than It probably should have been. Thankfully I knew I had a few hours till Ruby and Weiss would be back, and Blake always stayed late at the library. I stepped out of the bathroom, walking over to my dresser to grab my clothes, something sticking to my still-damp foot as I walked across the floor.

"What?" I mumble as I hop on one leg awkwardly and I look down to see what I had stepped on. I blush and then pale as I see a pair of underwear stuck to the heel of my foot. No, not underwear… Panties. I yelp shaking my leg like I had just been bitten by a snake, hopping around kicking my leg trying to get the offending piece of clothing off me. However, I had pushed my luck too far, as I let go of the towel I had wrapped around me, the towel dropping and pooling around my foot… my currently hopping foot. I let out a girlie scream as my heel got tangled up in the towel and slipped out from under me.

I groaned in discomfort as I lay in a naked heap on the ground. I lay still trying to stop the throbbing in my back as my aura makes quick work to try and nullify the pain. I roll over my eyeline now placing me right in front of the stupid object that started this whole thing. I snatch the panties from the ground as I sit up and try and figure out why these were just out on the floor.

"Damnit, Ruby." I groan as I see a few articles of her clothes strewn about the floor of the dorm. I had already been in the shower when Ruby and Weiss left. Ruby must have not put back all the clothes she pulled out when she was picking her outfit for the day. "Not like she wears anything but her cute combat skirt and cloak anyway," I grumble as I quickly pick up all the clothes our ADHD-riddled team leader had left out. A simple black skirt, a cute white top with thick red horizontal stripes, a pair of red canvas sneakers, and of course the stupid black cotton panties that had already caused me so much grief.

One thing I noticed as I picked up all these clothes were just how soft they were. They felt nothing like my clothes. My clothes were so scratchy and grainy. I liked my hoodie, it was soft but I hadn't gotten it replaced yet. I had been stuck with regular jeans, t-shirts, and my school uniform since I had gotten back. Weiss had been bitching at me to let her take me clothes shopping but I had always brushed her off.

"Transgender is a term for someone who is a different gender than what they were assigned at birth. This can be expressed in various ways, as there are trans men, trans women, and people who are non-binary and don't feel like they are either gender. Nora is a trans woman, and she takes hormones to help her live her life as a woman." Blake spoke, the rest of the table nodding at what she was saying.

I shivered as the memory ran through me as I looked at the bundle of clothes in my hand. Did Nora hate how guy clothes felt like I do?

"I was always a girl, but my body doesn't match," Nora spoke softly.

I wonder what that felt like. To dislike your body so much that you would want to change it. I mean… I guess I got it, or at least I got it a little bit. I hated my body, it was always wrong but I could never put a finger on what about it was wrong. I was too short, too skinny, too fat, my hips looked weird, my feet too small. I hated my short hair, that was changing though, I hadn't cut my hair since a few months before my mom died. My ashy white hair had now come down to my shoulders. I had taken to pulling it back into a ponytail over the past week. It was too short before my coma but ever since waking up, it was finally long enough to be in a ponytail and not look too awkward.

"Every guy wants to be a girl, it would be so much easier if I was a girl but it doesn't mean I get to be."

What would it feel like to be a girl?

I place Ruby's clothes on Weiss' super bed and step back and sit on my own staring at the clothes. What would they feel like? What would it feel like to wear clothes that didn't make me itch? Clothes that didn't make me feel like crawling out of my own skin.

Maybe I looked at women a little bit longer but not because I was checking them out. I was more caught up in their clothes.

I didn't understand.

Women had so many more options than men! It made me jealous a lot of the time. It's why I tended to wear just baggy clothes with jeans and hoodies being my usual apparel.

I stand slowly and walk closer to the clothes again. I was still naked… and they were right there. I was about the same size as Ruby, maybe a quarter inch taller. Nobody would know. I could try this once, and then forget about the whole thing. This didn't have to be a big thing.

I reach out to the black panties and pick them up. They were cotton, simple, nothing fancy. I sigh, trying to relieve my anxiety as I slowly bend over and put one leg in after the other before pulling them up. I flinch as the cotton settles around my hips. It was a bit tight in the front, but that was to be expected. Girls didn't have what I had… Or… Maybe some of them did. I don't know.

I shake my head, trying to stop the tumbling thoughts from making my heart ache any more than it already was. I grab the skirt next and slip into it. I settle it on my hips just like the panties and slowly walk over to the corner of the room that had Weiss' standing mirror. I frown looking at the skirt. It didn't look right. Was it supposed to go higher? I grab at the band and lift it to now settle on my waist, the band snapping as it presses into my skin, giving me a pair-shaped figure. Were my hips really that big?

I turn from the mirror and go back to the pile of clothes. It was just the top and canvas sneakers left. I pull the top over my head and slip it on. The neck hole was super wide as the top settled on the outside of my shoulders, the bottom of the top only coming to just shy of my belly button, a strip of skin showing off. I blushed and turned to my own dresser and grabbed some tiny ankle socks and pulled them on. My skin is covered in goosebumps every single time the fabric of the clothes I'm now wearing shifts around. I couldn't tear the smile from my face as I laced up the canvas sneakers and stood up, now fully dressed like a girl. I grab a hair tie from the top of my nightstand and pull my hair back straight into a high ponytail.

I turn to the mirror.

I breathe out a gasp. She was staring back at me. A girl was looking at me, and I, her. Was this really just all the clothes? They looked good on me, but that's just clothes. There are lots of guys who where feminine clothes.

It's not that weird.

I thought about going into the men's locker room to get changed, but the thought of being in there with a bunch of guys getting changed was quickly vetoed by my brain. I instead found a supply closet to get changed in instead. It was a tight fit, but at least I wasn't surrounded by a bunch of dudes in various states of undress. I chose a simple red hoodie and gray sweatpants. The idea of showing any sort of skin or brothers forbid walking around shirtless like some guys I was now seeing in the ballroom was horrifying.

No.

"Don't be gross, I didn't do that. What the hell is wrong with you? I don't even do that!"

"You are a boy, of course you do that." Weiss accused.

No.

"Ryker, not all guys wish they were gir-" Pyrrha started.

She was going to say 'girls', not all guys wish they were girls. That's what Pyrrha was going to say.

"Oh…" I breathe out, the tears already streaming down my face as I stare in the mirror. I stumble back before something hits the back of my legs and I collapse to the bed I had backed into. I sat completely still, not believing what was happening. I had to be wrong. I had to be confused, I just didn't have the words to properly express what I was really feeling. I wasn't a girl. I wasn't like Nora. I wasn't a girl. I'm not a girl, I couldn't be a girl.

I just wasn't typically masculine. I just wasn't like other guys, that didn't make me a girl. So what if I looked pretty, so what if I felt my heart racing in my chest at the euphoria I was feeling? That was just body image, not me….

Get up and quickly strip the clothes from my body, my mind going a mile a minute as I quickly shove all the clothes onto Weiss's bed and go to my dresser, and pull out my old scratchy clothes. I would never do this again. I just needed to forget about the whole thing and move on.

I was a boy, whatever stupid thoughts were crossing my mind were just me trying to shove myself into others' spaces. Nora was a trans girl, I was just a stupid boy who was overreacting and seeing monsters instead of shadows. What I felt wasn't real.

I'm not a girl.

"Would you like to talk about the dock incident?" Dr. Azule spoke, her pen scribbling something down on her notepad.

My first session with her had been going terribly, the woman seemed determined to needle me on the most sensitive subjects possible.

"Not particularly." I rasp.

Dr. Azule looked at me for a moment before scribbling something else. "I think it would be helpful for you to talk about your experience that night. You nearly died, and even more, you took several lives that night."

"People die, I'm not losing sleep over it." I lie through gritted teeth.

"From eyewitness reports as well as security footage, it showed that you killed six individuals within a matter of only a few minutes, immediately after which your body gave out and you proceeded to nearly die. The reports from the hospital state that you had nearly been unsavable, and that your heart stopped for a total of two minutes and forty-three seconds. The fact that you survived is nothing short of miraculous and you don't feel like that experience had any impact on you at all?"

I glared at the woman, her pointed gaze cutting right through me. "I survived, I don't see the point in thinking about that night anymore. It's in the past."

Dr. Azule sighed as she wrote something else down. "Ryker, you have to open up to me about something. If you don't give this a try then I will be forced to report to Headmaster Ozpin your refusal to participate in your mandated therapy."

"It was scary ok! I was scared. I didn't know where my friend was, I didn't know if she was safe. I spent the entire weekend looking for her, and when I finally found her she was fighting Roman Torchwick and the White Fang. She was outnumbered and she was losing. So I was scared. Is that good enough for you?" I snap, the tension in the room building, the slight hum of the room ventilation being the only sound in the now utterly silent room.

Dr. Azule gave me a small smile, pity, she pitied me. "When interviewed about the entire situation it was made clear that you, your teammate Weiss Schnee, and your teammate Blake Belladonna had gotten into a quite heated argument. It was insinuated that you left to search for Blake with the intent to fight her because of the argument." She stated simply, the scratching of the pen on the paper filling my ears.

"Your point?" I bite out.

"My point is, what changed from the fight to you finding Blake? Weren't you angry with her? Angry enough that you wanted to hurt her physically?" Dr. Azule asked.

"I don't know, I calmed down. What kind of questions are these? You act like I wanted to kill her." I bark.

The woman's eyes widened a fraction of an inch. "I never said that you wanted to kill her. I simply want to know what prompted you to defend a teammate that only a few hours prior you wanted to hurt."

"She's my teammate of course I would defend her from some thugs in masks."

"However it was made clear that even after sustaining the injury that eventually led to you being in a coma, your only focus was to make sure that Blake Belladonna was safe. Why were you so focused on protecting her instead of simply just wanting to stop the bad guys?"

"Because I couldn't lose another person I love!" I shout.

Dr. Azule let a small smile form on her lips, setting her notepad aside as she focused in on me, her eyes gleaming with something I couldn't quite place. "You are referring to your mother, Maria Thorne, correct?"

The question was like a slap to the face. I flinched at the name of my mom. " I don't kno-"

"You lost your mother eleven months ago, she is the person you lost that you loved, correct?" My head nodded slightly at the question. "And when you thought your teammate Blake was in danger of dying like your mother who just so happened to have been killed by the White Fang. You did everything you could to make sure that it didn't happen again?"

I wordlessly nodded.

"Tell me, is your love for Blake just simply the love you would have for a friend?"

"I-What do you mean?" I ask confused at the line of questioning.

"Is Blake someone you simply view as a friend and a teammate or do you view her as something more? Is that why you, a below-average fighter according to your academic records, as well as someone who before your mother passed away showed no interest in becoming a huntsman so easily made the decision to kill six individuals without a second thought?" Dr. Azule spoke, the entire time my body getting more and more tense as I slowly began to hear my own heartbeat, the silence of the room filled with the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

"I-I-I-I don't know what you want me to say?" I stutter.

Dr. Azule leaned forward, the woman's eyes gaining a bit of softness to them. " I don't want you to say anything that isn't true, but I do want you to be honest with yourself and with me. How do you feel about having killed people? You are the first first-year student in your class and your team who has had to take a life while enrolled here. I want to know how that makes you feel. I want to know what your connection is to Blake Belladonna, to know if you took those lives for the sake of a teammate or maybe because you love her more than just that. I want to know how you are handling the death of your only parental figure and if you need special accommodations for your schooling around the anniversary of her death. I want to know these things so I can get you whatever help you need, and offer you coping methods and strategies for these difficult milestones in your life."

I sat there in silence, not daring to look at Dr. Azule. My eyes misted up as the emotions slammed into the walls I had built up over the past year. I had kept everyone at arm's length. Even my supposed friends and teammates only knew half-truths about me. In the near year that had passed I had lost my mom, been in two comas, developed an eating disorder, had my ribs broken by a jerk with a mace, and I didn't even want to think about a few nights ago with Ruby's clothes.

This year had sucked, and I had kept as much of it to myself as possible. I justified all of it by telling myself that even if I had suffered all of it would be wiped away the moment I could go back to save my mom. That if I just kept grinding and getting stronger and pushing my limits I could go back and none of this would have mattered. It had to be worth it. Yet, it didn't feel worth it, and I felt no closer now than a year ago to being able to save her.

"I love Blake," I finally say. "I love her, but I can't get close to her, I can't get close to anyone, because the people I love leave me. My original parents abandoned me. They packed up one day, took my older brother, and all of their stuff and just disappeared one day never to be heard from again, they disappeared off Remnant knows where. Then I met Mom, and things were great until she left me too, and… And when I saw Blake fighting the White Fang I thought I was gonna lose another person that I loved."

My breath hitches for a moment before I steel my nerves and try to push out the words trapped inside me. "You want to know how I feel about killing those people? I don't, I don't feel a thing for them. They were going to take another person from me and I would rather die than let anyone hurt someone I love again. I don't care if that makes me a bad person, or if it makes me seem unhinged or insane. I have lost everyone that has ever mattered to me and I refuse to let it happen anymore. I will bury my heart and bury my feelings if it means that Blake, Ruby, and Weiss are safe."

I shudder, the silent tears slipping down my face as I let it all out. "It hurts… Every day hurts more than the last. I failed her. Mom worked at a job she hated to keep a roof over our heads, and she so badly wanted me to pick up a part-time job to help out but I refused. I told her I couldn't handle it. Meanwhile, she was slaving away for a company that viewed her as an animal." I gritted out, not daring to look at the woman sitting across from me.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, over and over I would go to open my mouth, but the most painful words were failing to leave. My hands gripped at each other painfully, eventually, I dug my thumb into my palm hard enough, the nail cutting into my skin as I will my aura to not deaden the pain.

"The night she died, we fought. We fought about me getting a job and I walked away from her. I left the house just to get away from her." I sobbed, the sound dry and wet at the same time. "The last thing she said to me was that she loved me… And I told her I would see her later." My voice broke as I finally just started sobbing uncontrollably, unable to stop, unable to try and pull all of it back inside. I buried my head into my hands, pulled my legs up onto the couch I was sitting on, and curled up into a ball as I just cried.

By the end of it, I was numb. Dr. Azule had told me to come back next week for another session and guided me out, she must have sent a message to my team because when she led me out of her office Weiss was in the waiting room. I don't know if it was my face, the tear tracks, or how I kept my eyes trained on the floor but when Weiss saw me she wordlessly got up, walked over to me, and pulled me into a hug.

It shattered me, just when I thought I had nothing left to give I started crying again right there in Dr. Azule's waiting room with Weiss consoling me. I held onto my slightly taller pale teammate like she would disappear if I let go of her.

We somehow managed to make it back to the dorm, Weiss must have sent messages to Ruby and Blake because not long after they showed up at our dorm with junk food and soda, and all four of us piled into Weiss' super bed and cuddled and watched movies on Blakes scroll for the rest of the day.

I didn't eat much, but Weiss managed to feed me quite a bit of popcorn. Every time I swallowed a piece another would be brought to my lips. I was so drained I ignored the weirdness of my teammate literally hand-feeding me and just took the pieces without a fight.\

Mondays were hard.

"Ruby… I need a weapon, not a… Whatever this is." I gestured to the drawing she had shown me. The thing was detailed but it looked like a flamethrower, rocket launcher, longsword, and submachine gun, that also turned into a scythe. It looked like it came from the mind of an insane person, and after finally sitting Ruby down to help me design and build my new weapon I was starting to think that she was.

Ruby scowled before crumpling up the design and tossing it behind her, the ball of crushed-up paper landing in the small pile she had made over the past hour. "Fine, since you are so smart why don't you tell me what you would make." Ruby pouted.

I grinned before taking a piece of paper and crudely drawing what I had been thinking about over the past couple of hours. I finish and slide the paper back over to her. "What about something like this?"

Ruby took one look at it before getting a dangerous glint in her eye. She nodded slowly refusing to take her eyes off the paper. "Yeah, this could work. It's got your name all over it."

It took us the better part of the week, every single day after classes and training we would meet up in the engineering lab and work on my new weapon. Ruby did most of the work, but she managed to make me not feel like a complete waste of space and had me grab her the tools she needed to lift heavy things. I knew it was just to make me feel like I helped, but a small part of me was annoyed at the fact that Ruby was easily stronger than me and that the process would have probably gone faster if Ruby had just done the entire thing by herself.

Finally, though, the work was done. We had finished up work on my new weapon, or I should say weapons. Laid on the table before us sat Regret and Hope. Hope was a pair of gauntlets that doubled as brass knuckles, the gauntlet's part housed a dust-mixing chamber similar to Fool's Folly, though it only had four chambers, fire, ice, wind, and lightning. Each gauntlet was capable of mixing up to three types of dust without risking any damage to the gauntlets or me.

My fighting style was to get into my opponent's space, trap their weapon, and deal as much damage as quickly as possible. To cover the trapping of the weapon the right gauntlet had a curved blade that would rest on top of my wrist, with practice I could bind weapons with my right hand and deal damage with my left hand.

That left Regret. Regret was an armored shin guard for my right leg, the metal wrapping around my leg, with lightning dust running a small engine that would add explosive power to my kicks. The exhaust would burst out the back of my leg, making my leg like a rocket-propelled sledgehammer. On the front of the shinguard sat a rotating chainsaw that would be able to spin at an rpm comparable to a muscle car. The entire ensemble added twenty pounds to me, with most of the weight being placed in the shin guard housing and the mechanism that ran the rotating saw.

I would have to relearn how to shift my weight, my right side now considerably heavier than my left side, but with a proper amount of training, I would be able to move just as fast as before, if not fast with my new aura reserves helping take some stress off my actual muscles.

"So you want to take this for a test drive?" Ruby asked as she wiped the sweat off her brow, my team leader's chest rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath.

"Absolutely, you call the rest of the team, I'm calling Team PNLY," I mumble as I pull out my scroll. I was itching to put my new weapons to the test. I wanted to shake the rust off before I had to participate in Professor Goodwitch's class again. I didn't want to embarrass myself.