Wow, it's been a bit huh. I can't promise faster updates, but I'll try my best to not leave this long a gap again. Anyways, disclaimer time!
I don't own RWBY or Dragon Drive.
"The Vytal Festival! Oh, this is absolutely wonderful!" Weiss said excitedly, though Ruby knew that the heiress was exaggerating her excitement.
While she knew that Weiss was looking forward to exploring the things being set up for the festival, they were also there to check on a few things. Having woken up this morning to a notification that the dust store entrances were closed due to a lot of dust shop robberies was unusual, and worth investigating.
Ruby was keeping an eye on her scroll, waiting for a response from the Malachite twins, who she asked to check if these robberies were connected to their boss.
The red reaper was dragged away from her monitoring of her scroll by the rancid smell of fish.
"Ugh, this place reeks." Ruby said as she registered the smell.
"Well," Blake responded, "We are down by the docks."
"Yeah Rubes," Yang interjected, "You'd have noticed if you hadn't been nose deep in your Scroll all morning."
"Sorry Yang, I'm just waiting on some people to get back to me." the reaper said as she put her scroll into her pocket.
Weiss gave the girl a sideways look, "Anyway, ignoring Ruby's distraction, to answer Yang's question we are here because the other school's competitors for the festival should start arriving today, and I feel that a representative of Beacon should welcome them to this fine Kingdom."
"She wants to spy on them," Blake comments, "so she'll have the upper hand in the tournament."
Weiss very pointedly does not respond to the bow-wearing girls comment as she keeps walking, before stopping at an exclamation from Ruby.
They all walk back over to their leader, and join her in staring at the smashed down doors of a store, before walking over to get a closer look.
"What happened here?" Ruby asks the detective in front of the store.
"Robbery," he answers, barely looking at the girls, "Second dust shop this week."
"That's terrible," Yang comments, as Ruby has her attention diverted by her scroll buzzing.
'Ruby,' the text from the twins says, 'we asked the boss, but he said he's got nothing to do with them. We believe him, an act on this scale would, and has, pulled far too many cops into the area. While he mainly hires guys out, he still has enough illegal stuff that he wouldn't want questioned.'
Ruby frowned as she responded with a request to keep their ears to the ground. As she put her scroll away, she overheard the end of the two detectives conversation, though the thought of the theft being for the White Fang was something to keep in mind, the young girl doubted that they did the thefts themselves.
"Hmph," she heard from Weiss, "The White Fang, what a bunch of lunatics."
"What's your problem?" Blake quickly responded to Weiss' comment.
At this point, both the red and white members of RWBY shared a look, before Weiss responded to her teammate, "I just don't care for a bunch of criminals."
"The White Fang is hardly a bunch of psychopaths." Blake countered, crossing her arms, getting serious. "They're a collection of misguided Faunus." She corrected.
Ruby frowned at hearing this, while she always tried to see the best in people, even she wouldn't go as far as saying that the White Fang's actions were misguided. Frankly, her and Weiss disagreed on several things about the Fang, but their status as a criminal group was not one of them.
"Misguided?" Weiss spoke, unknowingly echoing her partners thoughts, "They are a Supremacist group!"
"So then they're very misguided. Either way, it doesn't explain why they would rob a Dust shop in the middle of downtown Vale!" Blake snapped.
"She's not wrong," Ruby spoke up, giving her partner a look, "They never caught Torchwick after I ran into him, it might have been him."
Weiss frowned, but held her tongue after the look from her partner, despite the almost glare she was getting from Blake.
Thankfully, the tension was broken by a cry from farther down the docks.
Ruby sighed at hearing that it was about a Faunus, she just knew her partner was going to somehow put her feet in her mouth, she just knew it.
Over an hour later, the air had gotten even more tense between the two teammates, and both of their partners noticed.
"Alright," Ruby says, breaking the tense air, "We're going to separate here, and give you two some time to cool off. Yang, I'm leaving Blake in your hands."
Before anyone could respond, Ruby grabbed her partner and dragged her away.
"Ruby!" Weiss exclaimed, "Where are we going?!"
"Somewhere you can vent." was Ruby's only response as she continued to drag the heiress through the streets of Vale.
After a trip down an elevator, and a quick conversation with an employee, the two found themselves in an open field with their dragons behind them. Notably despite Weiss' slightly annoyed facade, Stardust was very visibly showing his partners emotional turmoil, both through the visible tenseness in his frame and the audible, omnipresent growl emanating from his chest.
"Ruby," Weiss said, voice dark, "Give me one reason not to hit you for dragging me here against my will."
The cloaked girl said nothing, simply looking at her teammate and waiting for the upcoming explosion of anger. She didn't even have to wait that long, as both Weiss and Stardust lashed out at the same time as the heiress started to scream. For a while, the only sounds were angry yells from the white-clad heiress as she continued to try to punch her partner, and explosions as Stardust chased Archfiend all over the field that they were in.
After a while Weiss collapsed onto her knees, panting from exhaustion as her partner walk up. "You good to talk now?" the unscathed reaper asked.
Weiss put her fist to Ruby's cheek, as if to let herself think that she had actually landed a punch, before letting out an emotional sigh as she stared up at their dragons, now circling high above their heads. "Have I ever told you," she spoke, "why I have such problems with the White Fang?"
Ruby shook her head, and Weiss continued, "I have multiple issues with them, but the main one is, ironically, a lot more personal than you would think. For years they have been actively waging a war with my father, such as making board members disappear only for them to show up in a ditch a few weeks later." Weiss dropped her head down, and Ruby pretended not to see the moisture in her eyes.
"After a while, my father's anger became more and more obvious at home, and once my sister left he decided that I would be a good little girl, whether I wanted to or not, trying his hardest to mold me in his image, and using me as his verbal punching bag whenever the Fang, or any Faunus really, did anything that even slightly inconvenienced him."
"Eventually," She continued, "the very mention of them started to mean that my father was angry, and I guess that even being across an ocean from him doesn't change that fear reaction."
Ruby puts her hand on her partner's shoulder as their dragons land nearby, saying nothing as the two humans just sit in newly comfortable silence for a while.
"We're back Yang!"
The blonde turns at the sound of her sister's voice, which brings said sister to a stop at the look of worry on the blonde's face, with the question from said blonde making her heart drop into her stomach.
"Have either of you seen Blake? She left her scroll here and I can't find her anywhere in the school."
Meanwhile, across town, Torchwick was finalizing plans with the group of White Fang around him. "Any questions?"
"Yeah," one grunt spoke up, "What if we get Hunters on us?"
"For one, I don't think Hunter's are going to be at a Dust delivery," the criminal answered, walking over to a covered, shaking, container "But we have been given something to insure that they will be too busy to stop us from our mutual acquaintance."
Pulling off the cover, vicious smiles grew on the faces of all the Fang in the room. Which had Torchwick getting a grin himself, fully sure that his plan would go off without a hitch.
I don't know if I portrayed it the best, but Weiss' issue is that hearing of the fang triggers her fear of her father, which she then gets angry about being afraid, which causes a bit of an emotional spiral.
Also, I think I might have made Ruby a bit smarter than she should be... Eh, my story my rules, chalk it up to the AU I guess.
Ironically, writing this chapter actually gave me ideas for the next chapter, on a basic level at least. It also helped me come up with ideas for a completely different chapter of something, so yay!
Anyways, as I said at the top of the chapter, I can't promise speedy updates, for literally anything on my page, but I'll try to get stuff out faster than every 4+ months.
Read and Review!