Chapter 4

Sins of the Father

Ruby and Blake began their search the next morning not long after sunrise. As expected neither had gotten much sleep during the night for wildly different reasons, but unlike their partners, they didn't wake up in foul moods because of it.

They decided against searching the industrial district together, but only because Blake's argument about Ruby's legs making too much noise had been convincing, and because Ruby's sniper rifle combined with her superspeed allowed her to support Blake from a mile away while still being able to fight beside her at a moment's notice. If there was trouble, she'd only be half a second behind the bullet that inevitably saved her life.

In truth, Blake enjoyed sneaking in solitude almost as much as Ruby enjoyed spotting from her sniper's nest. The two were in their element, doing what they were born to do, and it was as though the past ten years since their last mission together had merely been a brief interlude.

"Gray building with smokestacks," Blake said, informing Ruby which building she was entering next.

"I've got visual," she said in Blake's ear, sounding as though she might've had something in her mouth. "All clear behind you. I don't see anything in the windows upstairs."

"No signs of life downstairs either," Blake whispered a few moments later. Not only could she see almost perfectly in the dark, but she'd be able to hear a pin drop in these empty buildings. Her sense of smell wasn't anything to scoff at either, and generally speaking, faunus preferred their living spaces to be rodent free. Wherever the White Fang were hiding, it was sure to be relatively clean and have plenty of air freshener.

"Roger that. Exit via the northwestern fire escape. Top floor. There's some Beowolves moving through the back alley."

Blake could practically hear Ruby scratching her finger on the trigger, her resentment toward Beowolves only getting worse over the years. She'd use lower grade ammunition to kill anything if she absolutely had to, but only if Blake's life was in danger, which wasn't likely. Crescent Rose wasn't exactly quiet even when firing subsonic yellow dust rounds, and a single shot would likely give away her exact position to any nearby faunus on guard duty.

Hidden in the shadows of the fire escape, Blake stealthily climbed to the roof. It took her a fair bit of scanning to finally spot Ruby half a mile away, hidden behind a desk in an old office building. She waved and Blake gave a half-hearted wave back, practically feeling the crosshairs beside her. Their methodical search was going slow, but they were making progress, albeit only one or two buildings at a time.

"Beowolves are moving on," Ruby said. "Something's got them agitated, but they're not sure where it's coming from. You got your negative emotions under control yet?"

Blake almost laughed. "No, but Grimm should have even more trouble sensing mine than yours. My aura doesn't exactly broadcast my emotions in case you've never noticed."

"Well, faunus or not, I think the White Fang are probably in the area. I've seen a few Nevermore flying around, and there's a Beowolf pack patrolling every other street. All juveniles of course, so keep your eyes open for adults lurking indoors. I need a better vantage point, but it looks like they're circling the district, just like vultures after a kill. Before the kill in this case."

"Eve," Blake muttered, glancing over her shoulder toward the giant, bloodthirsty elephant roaming the city about a mile away. Thankfully it hadn't gotten any closer. "It's gotta be because of her."

"Adam's teenage daughter having anger issues?" Ruby chuckled. "That surprises me about as much as Yang's kids having temper tantrums before bedtime."

Blake didn't say it, but if Eve was indeed drawing the Grimm to her, then confronting her was only going to make matters worse. Much worse...

"Where to next, Ruby?"

"The building across from you is empty. Lots of broken windows, and looks like civilians made it their last stand when the city fell given the missing walls. Head back to the previous building and use the alley and abandoned cars as cover."

Blake obeyed and silently moved through the empty building once more, cautious even after searching it, and made sure the coast was absolutely clear before traversing the street, shadow jumping whenever she'd leave herself even partially exposed.

"I'm in position."

"Alright, moving up and into the building you were just in. Top floor, third window from the left."

Blake gave her a minute or two to find another sniper's nest and to catch her breath, and took the time to catch her own and rehydrate.

"Try the building to the right," Ruby said. "There aren't many windows, but I've got a good vantage point if you need me to make some."

"Roger that." Blake snuck in through a second floor window with the help of Gambol Shroud's ribbon. Looking around, she saw more signs of life than in previous buildings. Tables and chairs that obviously didn't belong, as well as discarded trash, but it'd been any number of years since bandits or rogue huntsmen had made it their layer.

She was just about to radio Ruby when the ears atop her head perked up. The noise had been little more than a pin drop, but she was intimately familiar with the sound of a blade cutting through Grimm.

Blake shadow jumped out a window into a long, winding back alley, the kind she was raised in. They were like mazes, with infinite hiding places for her and her prey, but that suited her just fine. She had yet to ever lose a game of hide and seek.

She heard it again, only closer this time, and crouched underneath a dirty window. She expanded her aura to better blend into the shadows, and peered inside what appeared to have been an old office of some sort given the overturned desks and typewriters lying on the floor.

Two men wearing Grimm masks were standing by while a teenage girl wielding a katana fought a couple of juvenile Beowolves, likely lured there for training purposes. Blake recalled doing the same back when she wore a Grimm mask.

The girl was good, albeit a little sloppy due to exhaustion, but the men were grinning and nodding with approval. She was better than Blake had been at her age, but then again she also hadn't a world class huntress for a combat instructor.

"Eve," she whispered, her face practically pressed against the glass.

"What was that?" Ruby asked.

Blake covered her mouth. "Nothing. Just talking to myself. Stand by."

She lowered the volume on her wrist scroll and continued watching while Eve practiced various flourishes and evasion techniques before finally putting the monsters out of their misery. Afterward she took a series of deep breaths, obviously pleased with herself, and probably thinking herself a master swordswoman just like Blake had at her age. A quick duel with Weiss Schnee had quickly cured her of that delusion, and convinced her that she barely even knew how to hold her sword properly.

Blake got lost in a sea of memories watching Eve, seeing both herself and Adam in her movements. She had long dark hair with red highlights not unlike Ruby, falling just past her shoulders, as well as a pair of partially obscured horns protruding from the top of her skull.

She was lean like most faunus, and wore all black, but what stood out the most to her former combat instructor was the Grimm mask hiding half of her beautiful face. While most masks worn by the White Fang featured Beowolves, Ursa, Nevermores, and other common species of Grimm, Eve's mask resembled a Tarsus, a demonic bull Grimm that her father had fittingly chosen his surname from.

Eve drove her blade through the throat of a Beowolf even as it dissipated into nothing, unceremoniously ending the training exercise. Instead of sheathing her weapon however, she glared at the guards and demanded more. Although she had never met her father, she unknowingly acted just like him after a fight. There was never rest after battle, only pauses in between.

For the first time Blake finally bothered to study the guards. Their masks featured Beowolves, denoting them as foot soldiers that had recently graduated from being recruits. She didn't recognize the rifles they carried, but that had never exactly been her area of expertise. She did recognize the ornamental katanas on their hips however, and doubted they'd ever been used. Katanas were a popular weapon in Mistral and its surrounding territories, and were often to faunus what rapiers were to Atlesians, except few knew how to actually wield them properly.

The pair obeyed and quickly left the room, reappearing a few minutes later with four Beowolves following closely behind them. Being juveniles, they were easy to lure into traps, and also weren't intelligent enough to alert nearby packs. Blake had done the same countless times while training with Adam, and had employed similar tactics while moving through the city just earlier that day.

Eve dispatched them almost as quickly as before, bisecting them cleanly in two after removing a couple of limbs. It was standard procedure when dealing with fully mature Grimm, removing as many potential threats as possible before killing them in relative safety, but Eve wasn't practicing the techniques she'd learned at Oasis. She was taking her aggression out on the Grimm, and Blake might've felt sorry for them if it wasn't for all the bloodstains she had found in the nearby elementary school.

One of the guards executed a Beowolf taking too long to die with his rifle, which as expected was suppressed. Most faunus preferred having quieter weapons on account of their more sensitive hearing and oftentimes second pair of ears, and because they tended to share their living spaces with Grimm.

'Why did you have to be as trigger-happy as Ruby without any of the discipline?' Blake silently asked the fool. Between Eve's anger and the gunshot, she couldn't help glancing over her shoulder for any shadows moving that weren't her own, or ivory white buildings with penchants for genocide for that matter.

Once again the men left to find more Grimm, and sensing it would take them a while, Eve toweled herself off and grabbed a canteen from a nearby table. Given the claw marks and tar-like substances drying on the floor, apparently she'd been at it for several hours.

Blake moved to another window when Eve left the room to explore the building and stretch her legs, occasionally reporting back to Ruby about not finding anything. Eventually she lost sight of her, and while Blake contemplated following and confronting her, a leaf fell to the ground behind her.

The sword cut through her body without resistance, and Blake reappeared behind her attacker with weapons drawn while her horrified shadow faded into darkness.

"Eve," she said, studying the teenage girl. "It's not everyday somebody senses my presence and is almost able to sneak up on me. You've gotten better."

"Maybe you're just getting old and sloppy," she growled.

Blake's lip twitched. "Or maybe I wanted you to sense me so we could talk."

Eve snarled, katana and scabbard held with white knuckle grips. "What's there to talk about?" She looked as though she had more to say, and may have if not for suddenly choking up. Blake opened her mouth to speak further but found herself disemboweled mid-sentence.

Her shadow once again died in her place, choosing to avoid the blade completely rather than block it with her own. "How about we start with the reason why you left," Blake continued as though nothing had happened. "What did the White Fang tell you?"

"The truth!" She lunged forward and this time Blake had little choice but to engage.

"I was afraid of that..."

Their blade locked and sparks flew through the air, and with a primal roar Eve sent Blake skidding across the alley before sheathing her weapon and drawing it again almost faster than Blake could follow.

'She's almost as strong as Adam was at her age,' she noted, choosing to evade this time rather than have her teeth rattled by another heavy blow.

Most humans didn't think there was much of a difference between faunus types, besides of course an extra pair of ears providing better hearing, a tail better balance, or other obvious attributes. Blake as a cat faunus was quicker than most of her kind, but Eve as a bull was deceptively strong despite being a wiry teenage girl. It was also in her experience that faunus tended to reflect the personalities associated with their given traits, and in the case of bull faunus, they tended to attack blindly when enraged. Cats meanwhile seemed to prefer running away from trouble.

"YOU LIED TO ME!"

Blake ran out of room to evade and raised her blades defensively, her arms and legs immediately going numb from the sheer force of Eve's single strike, and almost regretted not having her body cleaved in two. Not only was she strong, but as a faunus, Eve was also much faster and more coordinated than the average human.

The girl was good albeit inexperienced, and like her father, more direct with her attacks than subtle like her opponent, who disengaged before Eve could follow up. Blake was by no means a master swordswoman, but she had trained for thousands of hours with THE master swordswoman of Remnant, Weiss Schnee. She was also the head combat instructor of Oasis Academy, spending several hours multiple days a week training the first generation of an all-faunus huntsmen academy. To say she was capable of defending herself against a fifteen-year-old drop out would've been an understatement.

"Blake," Ruby drawled in her ear, "watcha doin'?"

Blake ignored her and kept her attention on Eve and the blade currently trying to disembowel her.

"It's kinda hard to hear, but from the sound of it, I take it you found Eve and the White Fang, or they found you, and like usual you're wanting to take care of this yourself."

Again Blake remained silent, and not just because she didn't want Eve overhearing the conversation and realizing her combat instructor hadn't come to the city alone.

Ruby sighed in her earpiece. "Fine, but I'm moving to a new spot so I can at least watch. Being a sniper with superspeed that drinks lots of coffee doesn't really go well together. Speaking of, I need to use the little huntress' room. I'll try to remember to mute my mic this time. Try not to die or end the fight while I'm gone!"

Blake grunted non-committedly, shadow jumping out of the way of another heavy blow that would've turned her arms and legs into jelly.

Despite her relative lack of experience, Eve was good. Certainly better than Blake and Adam had been at her age. She might not have technically been a huntress in-training, but she was certainly capable of defending herself in the most dangerous hell holes of Remnant, which was all she had originally wanted when she first enrolled into Oasis. Before following her opponent's footsteps and joining the White Fang.

Blake couldn't help being reminded of the countless hours she had sparred with Adam and how his pure offensive fighting style had influenced her almost purely defensive one. Like her father, Eve preferred drawing from her scabbard for quick, decisive strikes meant for ending fights in single flourishes. Against a defensive opponent who preferred evasion over direct confrontation however, she had little choice but to follow up each of her attacks with the aid of her scabbard.

Blake was no stranger to duel wielding herself, and unlike Eve, her sheath was much more than a glorified club. Her cleaver was both her greatest defensive asset as well as offensive, but she could barely bring herself to raise her blades against Eve, much less combine them for her ultimate attack. It had been difficult enough in class, always pushing the girl beyond what she thought possible for her own good, but now she couldn't help recalling the fight that had ultimately taken her father's life and how it was mirroring this one.

"You need to work on your right guard," Ruby said, returning from her bathroom break and finding a new sniper's nest with a better vantage. "I know you're not taking the fight seriously, but have some respect for the art."

Blake almost smiled. "Why can I hear your partner talking?" she said, covering her mouth.

"Sorry," she laughed. "Sometimes I get lonely on missions and Weiss' aura is the only thing to keep me company."

"I'm sorry too. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."

Ruby snorted. "Ha! That sounded like Yang. You wanna repress our auras and listen to them argue?"

"Maybe later, Ruby. Little busy here." She crossed her blades and braced her aura for yet another impact, and found herself standing on wobbly legs on the other side of the alley.

"Please, you're barely even breaking a sweat. So long as she hasn't learned how to Moonslice, you'll be fine." When there wasn't an immediate response Ruby cleared her throat. "She hasn't learned to weaponize her aura like that yet, has she? B-Blake?"

"Let me get back to you on that..."

Moonslice as Adam called it had been his signature technique despite not being unique only to him. After channeling his aura and negative emotions into his semblance, he'd unleash it all into a single sword swing that as far as Blake was aware had never failed to fell an enemy no matter how skilled or powerful.

Most aura users were capable of doing something similar, channeling their aura into their weapons and launching projectiles at their enemies, but Adam's Moonslice had been a simple technique perfected by his anger and hate, and Blake wasn't about to leave herself open to such an attack. She'd seen the end results too many times to count...

"Eve!" she shouted desperately. "If you keep fighting like this, you're going to attract hordes of Grimm!"

"I don't care!" She charged again, weapon sheathed once more.

Running out of room and not wanting to regain it by fighting back, Blake shadow jumped onto the roof of the several story building, and Eve followed without hesitation.

"Why did you kill him?" she screamed. "Why!?"

Blake didn't answer, couldn't answer. The memory after all these years still too painful, and Eve's cries only making Adam's final words all the more agonizing.

"Why did I have to grow up without a father? Without a mother! Without anyone or anything!? WHY!?"

"I-I didn't have a choice," Blake practically sobbed. "Evelyn, please listen to me!"

Rose petals scattered and crimson leapt off Eve's blade, taking Blake by surprise so much that she didn't even have time to shadow jump out of the way. She raised her blades barely in time, and would've been hurled off the roof from the impact if not for tripping over the ledge. Her aura shuddered but her faunus instincts kicked in and her body righted itself just before she hit the ground, landing on her feet albeit stumbling slightly.

She fell to a knee to catch her breath, and counted herself lucky she hadn't taken the attack full force. What wasn't so lucky were the deep gouges in her blades despite the decades of aura saturation. Had it been Adam's Moonslice however, even a glancing blow would've torn them to pieces along with herself.

Eve dropped to the ground nearby, practically tumbling off the roof and landing on her hands and knees.

"Eve," Blake gasped. "Your father was a good man once. I didn't lie about that, but he changed, and over time he became a monster."

"Only because of you," she spat. Eve got to her feet, her legs shaking along with her blade. "You told me that you barely knew my father, but that was another lie, just like everything else you told me!"

"Not everything," Blake admitted. "Adam and I practically raised each other on the streets of Kuo Kuana. I loved him, and he loved me, but he loved hurting people more. That's why I left him."

"Why should I believe anything you say after all the lies you've told? After everything you've taken from me!?"

Blake took a deep breath and lowered her blades. "Eve, I wouldn't have come all this way for you if it wasn't the truth. I'm not asking you to believe me, or even forgive me. All I'm asking is that you please not make the same mistakes your father made. The same mistakes I made. Please..."

Eve raised her katana but hesitated when she saw the tears in her headmistress' eyes. "D-doesn't matter. Doesn't change anything. Everything I went through growing up, afraid and hungry day after day, it's all because of you. You claim to know what it's like living on the streets, stealing and begging, wanting your life to end up too afraid to actually go through with it. If you'd met the person responsible for all the horrible things that happened to you, what would you have done?"

"That's why I'm begging you not to follow in my footsteps, Eve. I've made a lot of mistakes, a lot of regrets, and now I'm having to live with them."

"Not for much longer..." Tears rolled down Eve's cheeks from under her mask, and she charged forward screaming at the woman who ended her father's life and ruined her own.

"I'm sorry, Adam," Blake said. "I couldn't keep my promise. I-"

A gunshot rang out, and it took Blake getting shot a second time for her to realize it wasn't Ruby coming to her rescue. Several rounds passed through her, but Blake was already halfway down the street, crawling on the ground and taking cover behind a crumbling wall while her shadow was executed in her stead.

Eve stumbled and spun in the direction of the gunfire, and saw her two guards with rifles firing in the direction her combat instructor had fled.

"Hold your fire!"

The men did as ordered but kept their rifles trained in her direction. Blake meanwhile silently screamed in agony from the burns and bruises on her upper back. Her aura had taken the brunt of the impact, but it had drained most of her remaining aura, and the orange dust felt like getting hit by a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire that'd been set on fire. It was just her luck that faunus tended to be good marksmen even without extensive training.

"Looks like you've got a couple of snipers," Ruby said casually. "Not very good ones, but it does complicate your plan of handling this on your own a bit. Change your mind about wanting help?"

"Stay out of this," she seethed.

Somewhere overhead, she heard Ruby slam her fist against concrete. "What did you even bring me here for!?" she shouted, sounding just as angry if not more. "To watch you die? You're lucky they didn't aim for your head or have better guns or ammunition."

"Yeah, lucky me..."

Ruby sighed and finished chewing. "Are you alright?"

"I've been better, and to answer your question, let me ask you one. Were you really going to let her kill me?"

"Dunno. I had about two more seconds to decide. Practically an eternity for me. Why, were you gonna let her kill you?"

Blake smiled despite herself. "You trust me, Ruby, even when you know I'm doing something stupid. That's why I wanted you here instead of Yang or Weiss. That and want to hurt Eve about as much as I do."

"How about I just shoot you instead? Get all the suspense out of the way. Telling Yang that I shot you for being stupid would go over a LOT better than telling her I let Adam's daughter kill you."

She shook her head, suddenly laughing as an extra pair of voices chimed in, agreeing with Ruby. "I'd forgotten how much I've missed this. The four of us, I mean. I can barely hear myself think."

"It is pretty great, isn't it?"

The laughter and voices fell silent when she heard quiet footsteps attempting to sneak up behind her. She recognized them and didn't bother raising her weapons, but did her best to rise to her feet. Eve rounded the corner with her weapons raised defensively, and kept them up despite Blake's passive stance.

"Miss Belladonna," she asked, voice trembling, "did you stab my father in the back and kill him?"

Blake swallowed. "He didn't leave me any other choice. He was going to kill my friends."

Eve nodded and looked away. "My earliest memories of my mother are her telling me about him. How great of a man Adam Taurus was. I know that's probably not true. She wasn't a good woman from what I hear, but she was still my mom, and she died believing in my father and trying to avenge him. It's because of you, both of my parents are dead, and you've been lying to me for years about everything."

"Not everything, Eve."

She shook her head. "This isn't just about them," her voice cracked. "I'm not avenging just them. I'm avenging me for the hell you put me through, and for lying to me. The only reason I attended Oasis was because I wanted to be closer to you. How could you look me in the eye every day, telling me stories about my father when you're the one who killed him?"

She sheathed her blade and channeled all of her remaining aura and hate, but Blake didn't move nor did she raise her weapons.

"Eve." A single tear rolled down her cheek just as one rolled down Eve's. "I'm sorry I made you do this."

Crimson radiated from her weapon, and rose petals scattered around them. "I'm sorry too..."

"Your name's Eve, isn't it?"

The girl spun, shocked to see a woman cloaked in red with a hood pulled over her face standing behind her without having so much as made a sound. She raised her weapons back in a defensive position, and the stranger raised a blade of her own, a peculiar-looking straight sword designed like a scimitar. It glowed green with some kind of strange energy she didn't recognize, and saw that another hung from her utility belt.

Eve glanced out the corner of her eye and saw the two guards lying in a nearby alley, hidden from prying eyes with their weapons nowhere to be seen.

"I like your sword," Ruby said, eyeing it closely. "Reminds me of someone I used to know." She took a step forward, eyes glowing bright blue from under her hood. "Want me and my partner to show you how to use it?"

(A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. I haven't created too many original RWBY characters for my fics, generally preferring to repurpose pre-existing characters, but it goes without saying that Eve is already one of my favorites. We'll see more of her personality in the coming chapters, but a bull seeing red is probably a good description of her at the moment. Blake played a part in killing her father as well as him joining the White Fang, and rather than confront her past, Blake once again tried running from it, and once again it caught up with her. I kinda like that being a recurring theme with Blake in my fics, and I hope you all enjoyed the introduction to Eve, daughter of Adam, and the daughter Blake might've had in a perfect world.

It was important to me that Eve isn't doing this so much because Blake killed her father, but because it created a domino effect, and Eve is a fifteen-year-old teenage girl who was lied to by the woman she trusted most. We don't know exactly what Blake told her, or the exact nature of their relationship, but it's evident that they're close and that Blake told some kind of lie that's come back to haunt her. Eve's not stupid, and has probably heard stories about Adam being a monster, but obviously that's not how her mother saw him, or how those closest to Adam always saw him. It's complicated, and we'll be seeing more in the coming chapters. Thank you again, friends, and I hope you enjoy the coming chapters.

All credit goes to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has blessed me with this story and wonderful readers such as yourself. God bless)