Chapter Twenty Five

Haven

/-\ Blake Belladonna /-\

In the end, we wound up walking back to the truck and pushing it into place before fueling. Our new friends found some gas cans in the back, which we promptly filled as well. Now having a vehicle – apparently the beater out back wasn't theirs and had taken a plasma bolt to the engine – we completely pilfered the empty store, taking just about everything we could carry. There were even a bunch of frozen (but cooked) burger patties in the back, which we warmed up in the break room's microwave and promptly devoured.

All in all, it only took us about half an hour to clear out from the station. I rode in the bed to make a little more room in the cab so one of them could drive to Bradford's camp. Sergeant Greene wasn't much for conversation back here, but neither was I. Our job mainly consisted of making sure the food and fuel didn't fall out, but we'd also found a tarp in the back of the station, so even that wasn't really an issue. About five minutes of mountain roads later, we abruptly veered off into the wilderness.

From there, it was a much bumpier and slower ride, but I was still glad we didn't have to walk it. This area was a little more forested, but still quite sparsely so. Even with the larger gaps between the trees, however, it would still be easy to hide here among the tall grass and brush. This fact was proven to me when several men jumped out of said brush and pointed guns at us.

I'd heard them coming and even had my sword in my hand, but before I did anything, I noticed their armor. Two of the three wore Phalanx armor like myself, simply different colors, while the third wore a beat-up and haphazardly repaired Carapace armor. "Vigilo Confido," I said to the one whose barrel was less than an inch from my face. I recognized him as the Medic from Strike Eleven, but I didn't know his name.

There was a momentary pause before their commander spoke up. "Weapons down, people, they're friendly."

"Good to see you again, sir," I said as they followed his orders.

"Likewise, Belladonna," Central Officer Bradford said. "I see you found Hernandez and Greene, who else you got with you?"

"All three Xiao Longs and Private Schnee, though she got wounded in a firefight last night."

"You've got wounded?" the Medic said, a clear accent to his voice that I couldn't place. "Well, why didn't ya say so? We'll lead you back to base and I'll patch her up."

We readily agreed and followed the three through the brush. The ride was still bumpy and we were moving even slower than before, but I was still happy that we didn't have to walk. I think I've done more than enough of that over the past few days. Now that I wasn't required to stand guard, though, my thoughts began to drift; began to reflect over recent events.

I'd been careless. I hadn't even thought of the fire attracting aliens, despite that being the exact reason I didn't build one when I was on my own. And Weiss got hurt because of it. On top of that, I'd had to unlock her aura and now, only a dozen hours later, we'd run into a person that was as close to being a doctor as we'd ever get out here. I pursed my lips, remembering the other reason why I'd unlocked it. We needed every advantage we could get, and more auric warriors would only be a boon to our efforts.

That brought on the natural follow-up question of unlocking more auras; well and truly letting the Djinn out of the Lamp. It only took another moment to come to a conclusion. I'd have to. I couldn't watch three people, not for the rest of my life and especially not after Ruby unlocked a semblance I could never keep up with. Sure, I had no intention of teaching them how to unlock other auras, but my ancestors clearly figured it out within their very short, very hard lifetimes, and these people weren't just grasping at straws trying to figure out what might be possible.

Now… who and how many? I'd have to get to know everyone to figure out who's best suited for training, but old wisdom said a three-to-one ratio was best for these sorts of things. Sure, I technically already had three students, but Yang was already past the very beginner stuff and Ruby… well, other than semblance control, Ruby probably wasn't going to need aura training, as much as it pained me to admit. Not for a long while.

It didn't take very long to reach their base of operations; a small and isolated cabin with a barn next to it. Two more soldiers, clearly having seen us from inside, opened the barn doors so we could drive in. I recognized both of them; both were sergeants, though only Durand was on a strike team. Sergeant Ozga, however… that one-armed woman in her Security uniform could probably kick the ass of most people on the Strike Teams.

As we passed them, however, I noticed Sergeant Durand wore a puzzled look, staring at the truck's cabin. "Something wrong?" Bradford asked as we parked.

She shook her head. "...Zhe girl… she feels… strange, is all."

"Who? Belladonna?"

The others were piling out of the truck now, Yang and Sergeant Greene carefully hauling Weiss out of the back with the Medic already assessing her wound. "Non," Durand said. "Her."

"Will she be a problem?"

She hummed. "I don't zhink so."

"It'll have to do. Keep an eye on her in case that changes," he said before marching up to our little group. I'd dismounted as well by this point, but was really just… standing around, not quite sure what to do. "Ladies, good to see you all again."

Summer gave a half-hearted salute, though she looked completely exhausted. After the night we had and the long hours of driving she'd endured, I couldn't exactly blame her. "...It's good to see another friendly face," she said. "Do we… have a plan?"

He gave a long, tired sigh. "The beginnings of one. A few of us still have contacts scattered around, despite the surrender which I'm sure you've heard about by now. We haven't made contact with any more survivors from the Anthill, though I know at least twenty others made it out… at least as far as the perimeter sensors would go."

"Yeah, we saw a few tire tracks leading out of the motor pool," Yang said. "Umm… we should probably tell you that Pyrrha helped us escape, though we, erm…" she rubbed her neck. "Split up, afterwards."

He shook his head. "EXALT is the last thing on my mind right now. In all honesty, they're probably getting hit as we speak. We'd narrowed down the location of their headquarters to a few buildings in Sevastopol; we initiated a data wipe, but with the systems compromised, it's entirely possible the aliens could've stopped it."

"Data…" Ruby's eyes went wide. "Wait, Penny! Is- is she-?"

"She escaped," Bradford interrupted. "One of the last things I saw on the monitors before we abandoned Delta Section was her, Vahlen, and a few others hopping on the Skyranger."

"They had a fighter on their tail," Yang said. "Do you think they…?"

"Long odds, but if anybody could do it, Big Sky could."

"We'll just have to hope, then," Summer said.

"Not much more we can do," Bradford said. "C'mon, we'll get you cleaned up and in some fresh clothes. Not gonna lie, you all look and smell like shit. Tomorrow, we'll have work for you; especially you, Doctor. We were on the verge of defaulting back to our conventional kit; none of us know how to maintain or even charge those complicated laser guns."

"Oh goodie…" Summer let out. "Is there at least a machine shop somewhere around here?"

"Just what you see there," he said, gesturing to a corner of the barn that held a workbench, rolling toolbox, and a drill press.

"I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker…" she mumbled under her breath.

"We can get you more tools if you need them… probably. Get us a list, descriptions of each tool on there, where we're likely to find them, and how critical they are to your work."

She hummed. "Yeah, okay, sounds like a plan. I'll go through everything tomorrow, just leave a pen and paper on the bench. For now, though, I call first dibs on the shower," she yawned. "And the bed."

"Understandable. You all look like you haven't gotten a moment's rest since the Fall. Armory's in the entryway, dismissed."

We all silently marched off, exiting the barn and heading straight for the small rancher that took up most of the space in this clearing. There was a dirt road that led… somewhere, but it certainly didn't lead to the path through the brush we'd taken to get here. The house was dominated by a single room; a combined kitchen, dining room, and living room, though the latter had been converted to an armory – just as Bradford said – with several of its shelves now hosting grenades, magazines, and various other pieces of kit. Sergeant Ozga was already inside, stripping off her armor and leaving herself clad in the simple fatigues we'd worn back at Base.

She told us to neatly pile our gear off to the side before walking off to go do something. So that's what we did. I got more than a few odd looks when people finally noticed the pair of holes in my cuirass and the bloodstains in the underlying fatigues, but a quick flash of my now scarred skin was enough to allay their concerns. The new one was right next to the old, the two scars now forming a V-like pattern with the points only a fraction of an inch away from meeting. As Summer excused herself to take dibs on first shower, I held up Gambol Shroud's ribbon, now thoroughly soaked in blood.

While the others chose to lounge about while waiting their turn to bathe, I elected to stay just a little busy and walked over to the sink where I began washing the ribbon. Instantly, the water turned a deep red, leeching the stains from the woven carbon cloth. Slowly, it turned lighter and lighter shades, going from red to pink to, finally, clear after about five minutes. I wrung it out and hung it up on one of the cabinets before stripping my shirt and washing that as well. Sadly, the fatigues proved far less stain resistant and the water by itself didn't really do much. With a groan, I wrung out the shirt and hung it up as well.

By the time I'd finished with that, both Summer and Yang had showered – the latter very much surprising me, given how long her showers were at both Beacon and at Qrow's Cabin. But, seeing as how Ruby seemed completely dead to the world as she slept on the couch, I decided it was my turn for the shower. Yang took one look at me and her gaze immediately darted the other direction. For some reason, despite having worn less than the bra that currently covered me in the White Fang, I felt a little heat start to color my cheeks as I proceeded into the bathroom.

To my pleasant surprise, when I got there, I found several fresh sets of fatigues on a shelf next to the sink. None of them were exactly my size and all of them looked quite a bit older than those worn at XCOM, but it was still a welcome sight. So I stripped what few clothes I still had on and took a relatively quick shower. When I stepped out, Ruby was still sleeping, but Yang sure wasn't. No, she was pacing back and forth in the living room-slash-armory.

One of her ears flicked towards me, and she halted in an instant. With a stressful sigh, she marched up to me and grabbed my hand. "We need to talk."

"Huh?" I muttered before she practically dragged me off to one of the two bedrooms and locked the door. For just a moment, my mind went back to one of the many romance books I'd read; one with a quite similar turn of events. I tried not to flush as I recalled just what happened after that door locked in the book.

"Blake, I…" she muttered. "I just… we need to clear the air between us."

"Oh," I let out. In an instant, I knew what this was about; how could I not? "Look… I'm- I'm sorry about waiting so long to tell you about my past. And if- if you'd like me to go, just-"

"Wha- No! That's not what I'm talking about!" she shouted. "I mean, we do need to talk about that, but it'd be better if we did that with the others."

"Then- then what do we need to talk about?" I asked, mind racing for answers and coming up completely blank.

She glanced away for a moment, hand twirling a few strands of her shortened hair. "I… well, I think we need to talk about my, umm… confession, a few days ago."

"Your…?" I blinked. Suddenly, I knew what she was talking about. Half-lidded eyes filled with relief, awkward stammering, the kiss, even the words themselves. "...oh…"

"Right. I, umm… I know it's not exactly the ideal time to start a relationship, but I just need to know. Do you- do you like me back? Was that why you brought me hunting earlier? Was that our- our first date? Or am I reading into things that aren't there?"

"I… didn't really think of it that way," I said. Instantly, her shoulders sagged and ears curled in on themselves. It made my heart hurt just to look at her when she was like this. She was Yang Xiao Long, she was supposed to be confident and charismatic… and yet she looked like a kicked puppy. I reflected on my feelings about her for just a moment. Of course I felt drawn to her, but the first thing that popped into my mind was when Yang sat me down and told me to take a break from pursuing the White Fang. The second was her sheer determination to get into XCOM; to make sure what happened to her never happened to anyone else again. And yet, even as she attacked every challenge I set forth, she still made time for others in her life, and the few hobbies she could still indulge in at the base.

"...Oh," Yang muttered. "I… well… I'll just, umm, leave you be, then…"

As she started to move past me, however, I grasped her forearm. Her confused eyes met mine. "That… wasn't a no."

"W- wait, really?" she asked, eyes practically sparkling.

"I-" I started, trying to think of just how the hell I was going to articulate this. "I… I do like you, Yang, but there's… a little problem." And the joy in her eyes was immediately gone, the confusion returning. "I… was still figuring out how I felt about Yang- umm, the Yang from Remnant. I'm pretty sure I was crushing on her and I really don't know how much of this is just those feelings bleeding over."

"O- oh," she let out. "That's… wow that's a weird thought. I didn't even think of that…"

"But I do know you're a good person, Yang," I said, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. "And… I think I'd be willing to figure it out with you."

"That's-" she stuttered, a goofy grin on her face. "I'd like that."

"So, umm… what do you wanna do?" I asked.

"I have no idea," she said, letting out a laugh. "God, it's nice to worry about normal shit for once. You ever get that feeling?"

Several things flashed through my head; the fight with my parents over staying with terrorists, the Battle of Beacon, ending up here, meeting interplanetary clones of my friends and myself, turning Humans into Faunus, the Fall of XCOM… this seemed so mundane by comparison. "It's… nice, yeah."

"Well, how's about this? What do Faunus usually do on first dates?"

I stared at her for a moment, being completely caught off-guard. My instant thought was to correct her, but before I opened my mouth, I had a better idea. "What do Humans usually do on first dates?"

She opened her mouth, but then closed it again, a dusting of red on her cheeks. "...point taken."

"How about, instead, we grab some of that food we brought back and whip something up? I saw enough chips in there that we can definitely make some Vacuo Sourdough."

She blinked. "You can make bread out of potato chips? How does that even work?"

I shrugged. "Vacuo's gonna Vacuo. It is pretty good, though."

"...That's really weird, but I'm morbidly curious."

"That's how they get ya," I said as we exited the room.

We got some really weird looks, especially when we wrapped the dough in tin foil and chucked it in a fire, but in the end it turned out well. What mattered more is that we both had a pretty good time. It was enough to make me forget what a horrible person I was for just a moment. Of course, I remembered later, but I still had fun.

/-\ Ruby Xiao Long /-\

I sat alone near the fireplace, munching on some chips we'd "liberated" from the gas station. It was nice to have food again, but I still felt… honestly, pretty empty. It was as if things had just lost their luster. The thoughts were still there, waiting in the shadows for my mind to wander far enough from the beaten path. I was doing an okay job of not letting that happen today, as I was yesterday, but I knew they would eventually. They always did; they always slipped through the cracks.

And then I'd be useless until I could get them contained again.

My gaze wandered over to the kitchen, where one of the soldiers was rummaging through the cabinets. After a moment, he found what he was looking for: a carton of cigarettes. He swiped one before putting the carton back and walked away as he fished out his lighter. My eyes lingered on the cabinet for just a moment. Unbidden, my mind wandered to all the depictions I'd seen of grizzled veterans smoking. What if they have the same problems as me? I wondered. What if it helps them cope?

Before I could second-guess myself, I stood up from the chair and padded over to the cabinet. I reached in and retrieved a pack, turning over the red-inked box in the palm of my hand. Was I really gonna do this? All those anti-smoking posters and videos from school popped into my head, the facts about tar building up in my lungs, the cancer risks, everything. But in the end, I needed to know if it would help. Even just a bit. I could always quit later, when things were better.

So I took a cigarette and re-placed the rest in the cabinet. Next to the stacks of cartons were a bank of lighters. I took one and after singing my thumb a few times, I finally had a flame. I put the stick between my lips, held the lighter to the end, and breathed in.

Immediately, I began coughing up a storm. But that, too, passed. When it did… I actually felt just a little calmer; just a little more relaxed. I let out a sigh, the stick still burning between my three fingers.

"No smoking in the house," a voice said from behind me.

I whipped around, eyes wide, and saw one of the soldiers standing there. "Wha- I wasn't-" He gave me a flat look, glancing at the cigarette which was clearly still in my hand. "...please don't tell my Mom?"

He shook his head. "You went through the shit, I won't tell a soul. Try not to let it become a habit, it fuckin' sucks to kick."

"I- I'll try," I lied. He shooed me away and I slipped out the sliding glass door and onto a small, cement deck. I don't really know how long I stayed there, just looking at the trees and the birds darting between them, but what I did know was that those thoughts got just a little easier to suppress with each puff. I coughed less, too. Eventually, the cigarette burned all the way down to the filter and I shoved it into an ashtray on the patio table. Already, there was the temptation to go back to the cabinet and grab another one, but the soldier's words about not getting addicted rang in my head.

In the end, I went back inside and just started exploring the house proper. It was pretty small; three bedrooms and a single bathroom shared between the main floor and the basement. And even then, the bedroom in the basement was set up as an office with a computer that had definitely seen better days. On a whim, I decided to power it on. After fifteen minutes of staring at the Windows XP startup screen, I decided to grab a snack from the kitchen, which took another ten minutes simply due to indecision. When I came back, it was finally in the last stages of startup.

By the time I'd finished my bowl of chips, it was ready to go. There weren't many actual programs on the desktop, but there were about a billion and a half shortcuts for Internet Explorer. I blinked, surprised anybody would need more than, like, one, but quickly moved past it and opened the only browser on the machine. Without thinking, I'd already put in the URL to download Firefox, but then got an error 404. I blinked; how could something as ubiquitous as Firefox be down? So I went to Google to search up a different link, but then Google was down too!

Opening up Command Prompt, I started pinging around, figuring that there was something wrong with the dinosaur of a machine I was using, but the weirdest thing was that I could actually reach several of the sites I normally used, but not those two very common ones that everyone knew about. With a shrug, I popped over to the Forgotten Weapons forums for old time's sake, but was again met with an error 404. But I just pinged that, I thought.

I went back into Command Prompt and pinged it again; Request Timed Out, Request Timed Out, Request Timed Out. "What the fuck?" I muttered, checking one of the other sites I'd pinged and gotten a response from. It was down now too! My eyes widened. "They're killing the internet… Holy shit, they're killing the internet!"

My fingers danced across the keyboard, going from site to site and caching as much as I could on the computer itself. The fans whirred up to speed, sounding more and more like a jet engine with every site I visited. Before long, I had 20, 30, even 50 tabs open, all keeping little islands of information alive. Survival guides, technical manuals for common machines, even some books that had been controversial in the past such as The Anarchist's Cookbook or Expedient Homemade Firearms were all downloaded.

As I downloaded those more controversial things, however, I realized that the aliens might have interest in the people who did, and possibly a way to track them. But I couldn't just stop my archiving to go find Bradford and tell him, so I started banging my foot against the wall and shouting. Within five minutes, I heard someone thunder down the stairs. "Ruby?! What's wrong?!"

"Get Bradford!" I shouted, not even looking away from the screen. I was nearing a hundred pages now; long since run out of fresh pages. I'd resorted to the Wayback Machine, which was somehow still up.

"What is going- wait, Ruby," my mother said. "Why do you smell like cigarettes?"

"That is not important right now!" I snapped. "The aliens are killing the internet! Go get Bradford!"

"The aliens are-" she cut herself off. "I'll be right back!" she shouted before storming back upstairs. I continued archiving sites. At this point, I was just popping the downloaded files into a single unnamed folder on the desktop; it could be organized later, this was very much time sensitive.

Seemingly only a few moments later, the thundering of footsteps returned. "Xiao Long, what the hell is going on?!" Bradford shouted.

I barely spared him a glance. "The aliens are killing the internet! I'm archiving as much as I can, but I only know so many sites!"

He hummed. "Good initiative. Show me how you're doing it and I'll take over from here."

It barely took a minute to show him how, and then he was in the seat instead of me. I was sure to mention the Wayback Machine before I got practically dragged out of the room by my mom. My head was practically spinning at how fast Bradford was pulling up sites and I didn't recognize any of them. Of course, then the door got closed in my face. I blinked, turning back to mom as we stood in the hallway. She wore a stern expression, looking every bit the drill sergeant that her fatigues suggested. "Ruby Rosamund Xiao Long," mom started. "I look away for literally half a day, and I come back to you smelling like a chimney. Do you have an explanation for that?"

By the time she'd finished her little rant, my hands were already clenched at my side. "They- they take the edge off."

"Do you have any idea how bad they are for-"

"My health?! Yeah, no duh! It's not like it's esoteric, forbidden knowledge!"

"Then why in the world-" she cut herself off. With a deep breath, she finally continued. "Ruby. I'm just… I'm just worried. There's already so much wrong in the world that you- that we can't control. Why choose to smoke, too?"

"I already told you," I said, looking away. I hated it when she got like this; all moralizing despite me having perfectly good reasons for doing what I do.

"But there's gotta be better ways to deal with it; healthier ways, I mean. Not just for your body, but you've gotta realize that's just a coping mechanism. Ruby, I used to smoke and you really don't want to start down this path."

"Well what the hell is your magical solution then, huh?!" I shouted. "You don't know what it's like to know you'll just be dead weight tomorrow. You don't know what it's like to hate every second of it!" God, I could use another cigarette right now. My eyes trailed behind her, to the stairway. "I'm going for a walk," I lied.

Mom grabbed my arm as I tried to move past her. No matter how gentle I knew her grip was, her fingers felt like iron bars locking me into the spotlight of her gaze. "I really don't think that's a good idea," she said. "Maybe… maybe we could go do inventory in the shop? It's actually what I was about to do when I heard you."

So you can make sure I don't step out of line? I thought. "What if I don't want to do that?"

She blinked. "I… okay, we could do something else. I could teach you how to do laundry by hand, since I doubt we'll have washing machines in the future… not exactly fun, but it's something that needs to be done."

"You can do whatever, I just want to be alone right now," I said, tugging at her grip. It only tightened. "Just lemmie go!" I shouted, tugging harder.

"Ruby, please, I'm trying to help you!"

She reached her other hand towards me as I tried to pry her first off. I just wanted to go at this point; just be anywhere but here!

Suddenly, the world turned red; just like it had a few days ago. For just a moment, there was absolutely nothing beneath my feet, and then I was falling. My feet hit the ground at the same moment my vision cleared and I saw roof tiles below me. "What the fuck?!" I heard mom shout as she suddenly let go of my arm. I tripped and stumbled as a wave of vertigo and nausea overtook me. "Ruby!" I heard as I started rolling downwards! One moment, it was roof tiles, then sky, then more roof tiles and I flailed around trying to stop myself, but nothing I did helped!

Just as I saw the ground a full story below, I felt a hand grab my ankle. I stopped rolling and caught myself just in time, my shoulders hanging over the edge of the roof. I shook, breathing hard as I pictured just how close I'd been to falling. I'd seen my fair share of videos on the internet of people falling to their deaths; this wasn't anywhere near tall enough for me to be an unrecognizable puddle, but it was certainly enough to kill me… or be just high enough to maim me for the rest of my life while still being survivable, depending on how I landed.

Shivering, I looked backwards as Mom pulled me towards her. "I got ya, d- don't worry, I got ya," she said.

I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, practically flinging myself into her arms the second I could. "Th- thank you, holy shit, thank you."

"Language," she chided with a chuckle, returning the embrace.

I groaned, rolling my eyes. "So… how do we get down?"

"I don't even know how we got up here."

"I mean, it was pretty obviously your semblance," Blake said from beside us.

My heart skipped a beat as I yelped. "Jesus Christ! Please don't do that!" She was peeking her head above the roof's peak, hair lazily blowing in the wind.

"How long have you been there?" Mom asked.

"About ten seconds," she said. "I was training with Yang when I saw the rose petals and heard you guys scrambling up here. Figured I should probably see what was going on."

She sighed. "Did you really have to scare the shit out of us?"

"Language," I chided. If she was gonna do it to me, I was gonna do it to her.

Mom rolled her eyes. "Fine. If you think that her semblance did this, do you think it can get us back down?"

"That depends," Blake said, turning towards me. "How do you feel? How much aura do you have left?"

I closed my eyes, looking deep within myself. Still, I didn't really know what I was looking for. I did feel pretty exhausted, but still kinda okay, so… "Maybe around half?"

"Okay, so you can probably do that again, whatever it was. Now, what did it feel like?"

"Not… really anything?" I said. "I just… I wanted to leave and then everything turned red and then we were here. I didn't really do anything weird."

"You're still using your semblance instinctively, then," Blake said. "Just like aura, semblances are muscles. Untrained people like yourself can use semblances – obviously, you got yourself into this situation – but it can be tricky for them to do it again. It sounds like you have a teleportation semblance, like mine. When I was first starting out, I'd look at something and try to go there. For instance, see those dandelions on the lawn?"

I looked over the edge of the roof and saw a bunch. "They're all over the place, yeah. Why?"

"Try to go there while pulsing your aura. See if that works."

"Wait," Mom said, grabbing my wrist again, though much more gently than before. "I was… grabbing you, when it happened. Maybe that had something to do with it?"

"Can't hurt," Blake said.

Taking a deep breath, I felt for my aura. Once I got a hold of the slippery thing, I focused on one of the dandelions; one sitting just below one of the many evergreens that ringed the property. It was one of the further ones, but it was also easily visible from here; I didn't have to peer over the edge of the roof and I would very much not like to know how high up I am right now.

So I focused on that one flower. I thought about how nice it would be to smell the flower… and not really all that much happened. I tried thinking about how nice the shade under the tree would be. Again, nothing seemed to happen. Maybe I'm overthinking this? I wondered. So I just looked at the spot and imagined myself standing there while pulsing my aura. I gasped when I encountered resistance! What?! It felt like I was trying to bench an entire car!

I tensed my muscles, not letting go of the mental image of me standing there as I pushed my aura harder and harder. A few rose petals formed mid-air, but I didn't let them distract me. I. Wanted. To. Be. There!

And the world went red once more.

When I could see again, I let out a single laugh before immediately collapsing against the evergreen. My lunch came back up as I sat there. I could only think about how comfortable the grass looked before I keeled over and saw no more.

(A/N) Not quite in time for Christmas, but hey, it's on schedule! For once! Ruby really isn't having the best of times, is she? Then again, is anybody? Like always, the beatings will continue until morale improves, lol. Anyways, I have a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! A very kind user on AO3 by the name of HerpyDerpyDoo made this story a TVTropes page! I can't link it due to FFN's stupid rules, but if you search "BRWL Trilogy" it should come up. It's relatively barebones right now, but it's still quite nice to have.

And now there's a guest review I'd like to respond to here:

Guest001 said: Take Jaune off the head line tag. It is more of an outright misrepresentation to keep it at this point. But you can do whatever just that be more honest in having another character there since there is what 4 or 6 chapters total with that last one just barely even a mention. I don't care who is the main character, but it is better to take Jaune off since you are not using his character as one of the main characters like what those tags are meant to be used as. Pyrrha, Qrow, Lie Ren, Nora, or even Weiss in this matter.

While that's certainly an underestimation of his time in the fic - and also how large an impact his death has on the main characters - I do actually agree with this and have removed him from the header. I originally had him on there because of the whole Dragonslayer thing that was going on, and I didn't want to mislead people by having that be a complete surprise, even if I never planned on having it pan out in this fic (though I do ship it).

Anyways, that's all I had for today, hope you all enjoyed! And I hope you all have a happy new year!