And a happy new year!
Sunday
"I want to be a Huntress!"
When, after an exhausting day of watching her favorite cartoons, Ashley Lilly rushed to the kitchen greeted her aunts with those words, what would have, in any other household, simply been another on the list of children declaring their latest dream, was inadvertently turned into a defining moment of the young girl's life, simply for the way her aunts reacted. Aunt Srebro, stumbled over her own feet, and Ecru had spun around so fast she shattered her dinner plate against the counter. The image of her aunts, the gentlest of all giants and the strongest woman on three legs, having turned the kitchen into a scene of chaos in the blink of an eye was promptly burned into the young girl's memory.
Most kids her age would have been shocked at the display.
She laughed her little butt off.
In the hours and days that followed, her aunts tried their hardest to subtly push Ashley away from that train of thought, but it never worked. Possessed of a stubborn streak that was only fed and reinforced by Ecru's own stubbornness, it took the young girl no time at all to draw her line in the sand and not budge on it.
Why shouldn't she be a Huntress? They were good guys, they helped people!
Auntie Srebro was a Huntress! Why can't she be?!
Of course she knew it wasn't an easy job, Grimm were scary, and if they were easy to kill, they would have all been killed by now!
Huntresses were cool - sometimes they even saved the world, like RWBY and JNPR!
Of course she knew this was how her Auntie got hurt, but there wasn't a war on now! So she could get strong and fight them off!
Her logic was flawless. Nothing made her budge. If anything, her aunts' attempts to get her to think of other life paths just made her want this one more. As she grew older, her reasons matured alongside of her:
The Grimm are breeding slower now! Huntresses could help people expand past the kingdoms.
Barely a tenth of Remnant was charted and explored. Think about all the history hidden out there where people can't get to! All of the history we knew we'd lost, and all of the culture we didn't even know we'd forgotten! To say nothing of the sheer amount of Grimm lore - like the mere existence of the Grimm Queen, Salem - that was hidden outside of their walls, the discovery of which could help them avoid things like the War of the White Witch.
Imagine if they found the Terrans again, they could learn why they invaded and why they left! How they survived all this time! All of them together could very well finish Humanity's longest war!
Huntsmen and Huntresses were hope to people! If people were still talking about rookies like Goud Etiolate decades after he died, or teams like RWBY and JNPR years after they had drifted apart, that meant people looked up to them! They needed them!
This all happened concurrently with her training to become a Huntress. While her aunts never really stopped pushing against this idea, by the time Ashley hit thirteen and they had found she'd smuggled home books on how to awaken one's aura, they decided it might be best to at least make sure she went about things the right way. If she was really determined to do it at all, best to do so safely. Despite this, and the fact that both of her parents and both of her aunts being aura-using Grimm slayers, Ashley was terrible at it. She made the cut to enter into Signal with days to spare by finally awakening her aura at sixteen - and would later learn that she had failed to beat the school's record for 'gone the longest without awakening their aura' by hours.
Worse was, despite feeling like she was on top of the world when she finally awoke her aura, her semblance promptly revealed itself to be perhaps the most mundane thing imaginable: Observation. Not telepathy, not empathy, no - Ashley had supernaturally good eyesight. Surrounded by students that could punch fire, absorb damage, run at hypersonic speeds, or outright fly, Ashley got away with the promise that she'd never go blind as she got older.
Her family, and now alongside them, even some of her friends, used this to try and gently reintroduce her to the idea that maybe the Grimm slaying life wasn't for her. Aside from the normal suite of powers granted by Aura - which, statistically, wasn't what really made the difference in any Huntress' life or death struggle - all she had was Observation. She was already a mile behind everyone her age because of how long it took her to awaken her aura, and now this was just making her handicap worse, because what could she do with a semblance like that?
She felt so proud of the response she'd come up with that when she graduated Signal, she put it in her yearbook: "I'll watch you watch me."
Even her more fiery aunt had to admit she was putting in the damn work. She had to repeat her final year at Signal twice before she graduated. Every single time she failed, she hit the books - and the training mats - that much harder. She had set herself a goal, given herself a wall to pass, and she would either climb it, or just go straight through.
That led her to Beacon's exhibition tournament. By the skin of her teeth, through sheer force of will and a tremendous application of stubbornness, she had made it. She'd passed every test, she'd crossed every line, and now was the day she'd show everyone what she was made of. Her semblance may be useless, her aura may not give her much over her peers, but she was going to get past that wall one way or another - be it climbing it, or just bashing her head against it until it fell or she broke it.
It was, perhaps, the best day of her life. The sheer thrill of being recognized by her entire kingdom, of declaring to everyone that she'd hit her goal and she was going to keep going was something she was certain beyond any doubt she'd never forget. Hours after it was all over, she was still high off of that initial buzz of the cheering crowds and the ring of the fight buzzer.
It was also the most painful day of her life. Signal had been the training wheels, the worst she'd ever gotten was a bruised rib, but today? She was pretty sure there was a bruise on every part of her body, her lip was split open, and she'd nearly bit her tongue off trying to headbutt someone.
But damn it, the day left her with the biggest grin on her bruised and swollen face. This grin remained even now, as she was walking down Vale's cold winter streets to get a celebratory dinner. She'd gotten her ass kicked - she hadn't even made it to the semi-finals! - but she gave as good as she got. Everyone who recognized her had, at some point, asked her how she'd managed to throw down for as long as she had, only removed from the tournament by technical knockout when her aura finally dropped too low. None of them could bring themselves to believe that it all came from weaponizing what seemed to be her only useful trait: Sheer. Stubbornness. Bashing her way through the wall at Signal had done nothing but proven it was possible, and now, come hell or high water, she'd do it again, and again, and again.
It was a terrible idea, and everybody told her as much, but she was just happy it had worked at all. She was here, after all! She'd made it! Besides, for all the incredulity she got from everyone, they were all just as impressed and happy for her, she could see it in their eyes. It was nice having everyone's eye in a good way for a change, and she liked the looks on some of their faces when they realized that she was grinning like a madwoman beneath all these bruises.
Sure, my aunt made it so far as to fight Pyrrha friggin' Nikos, whereas I'm starting out barely a few spots past dead last, but I made it! She told herself, her wide smile not even budging. No matter how many times she said it to herself, it just didn't feel real. She'd made it! She'd gotten into Beacon Academy! Sure, she was going to be categorized as a 'late entrant' and put alongside all the other adults who got late starts in life, but she'd made it! If she kept working as hard as she did she'd be a Huntress! A hero!
Especially these days… Thought the smiling woman, as she paused in the middle of the sidewalk. With the Grimm slowing down… Maybe I'll be help push the walls past Mountain Glenn? While daydreaming, she checked her scroll and ensured she was, indeed, on the right way to her preferred burrito place. Or I'll help find the Terran kingdoms. Many an idle hour had been spent imagining what those hidden enclaves must look like, given the sheer odds stacked against their survival. What their society must be, their culture. Even more martial than the four Kingdoms? Or maybe -
Something stopped her before she reached her destination: The sound of glass breaking. Turning around, Ashley looked in the sound's direction, seeing a street corner she'd passed not too long ago, a wide spray of golden light, and shadows dancing on the road. It was clear from the number of shadows, and the way they were moving, that they were breaking into the building around the corner.
Ashley stood there, scroll in her hand, bruised eyes wide, brow furrowed. The navigation icon blinked at her enticingly, promising an endless buffet of celebratory fish for her big night. The street, however, kept her attention, as the sound of bold, cruel laughter floated around the corner and over to her. She looked down at her scroll, longingly examining the icon telling her it was just a few minutes away. By the time she would make it, she wouldn't even hear them anymore!
Clearly, she wasn't the only one considering just minding their own business. A few other pedestrians had stopped at the bold faced attempt at burglary, and they were beginning to hurry off in the opposite direction - even those that had originally been walking towards it. Not for no reason, she knew - one of the few conspiracy theories she was actually willing to hear out was the idea that Roman Torchwick hadn't so much reformed himself as much as he'd used his pardon to utterly annihilate any investigations into his wartime crimes. She certainly wouldn't go so far as to believe some of the stories that spread about him, but his criminal activities were a matter of public record, his role as a double agent against the White Witch had been corroborated by two entire countries and several famous Huntsmen and Huntresses, and dammit the guy just seemed like he was still knee-deep in the filth, despite his good taste in clothes.
The end result was that Ashley, like most these days, was pretty sure that all crime, in some way or another, made its way back to him. Her evidence was currently burglarizing a corner store, seemingly uncaring of the fact that there were people that did see them, and an equal number that could if they walked around the corner. Why bother with the subtle routine when your boss owns the police and has favors with several governments?
Slowly, Ashley stowed her scroll in her coat pocket, and turned away from the sounds of carnage. In the end, what could she be expected to do about it? Ignoring the fact that she'd be stepping on a Kingpin's toes, she was technically a Rookie Huntress now. There were legal ramifications if she acted so far outside of her station and her jurisdiction, and there wouldn't be anyone like the late Professor Ozpin to bail her out, as had famously happened with Ruby Rose.
However, the thought of her childhood hero, as well as the sound of more things breaking, stopped Ashley in her tracks. She had long since grown out of her fantastical childhood idea of the Huntsmen, although her hero worship was a bit harder to shake. The older she got, the more she realized that they were just good ideas, and that there were reasons a lot of Huntsmen and Huntresses stayed as far away from the Kingdoms as possible and just stuck to killing monsters: The world of Men was far too complicated.
But.
Despite knowing this, despite knowing that the world had an outrageously large area between black and white, good and evil, she still liked the idea. Even if reality was a difficult, bloody mess, that didn't take away from the idea of things.
Like: The idea that Huntsmen and Huntresses were supposed to be better. They were supposed to be heroes.
She couldn't remember the exact quote, or even which of RWBY and JNPR had said it, but, perhaps appropriately, she remembered the idea of it: Power and responsibility.
Although there's a question of if I'm doing the 'responsible' thing… Ashley thought, turning back to throw her iron eyes in the direction of the light spilling out from the street corner. Definitely not the smart thing… The shadows were still dancing about, seeming to be lifting entire boxes and bags from inside the building. But a hero wouldn't just let a bunch of thugs run roughshod over their city, would they? And if I get it done quick, I might even get out before the cops show up!
She paused a moment, looking out at the dancing shadows.
Am I really going to go right from getting accepted to being a vigilante? She asked herself, sweeping a hand through her bloodstained raven hair and sighing, as it landed on the handle of an old, beloved baseball bat. Yeah. She began walking towards the light, leaving the dark streets behind her. Yeah I am.
It went better than expected. The fight, that is - as it turns out, there's an extremely palpable difference between fighting street thugs high on a criminal golden age, and fighting people training to become superhuman monster hunters. She hadn't even needed to use what little of her aura she had left! After the fight things went exactly as she expected, and now here she was, sitting in a police interrogation room.
Leaning back in her chair, feeling her injuries knit together in tune to her slowly rebuilding aura reserves, Ashley let out a long sigh, blowing a stray hair out of her face. She knew this had been stupid, and while attempting to quantify how monumentally stupid it was, she could all but hear her aunts' responses to this stunt. Srebro would be terrified about whether or not she'd gotten hurt, that she might have started something or invited retaliation. Ecru would be yelling about dumbass stunts and why had she risked so much for a store that had insurance, at a volume so loud that Ashley was ready to say her ears had already started ringing. They both would understand why she did it, and she would bet they wouldn't be surprised that she'd done it, though that didn't change how stupid a stunt it had been.
But, behind her aunts, formless and shadowy, were two more figures she could just hear. Their voices were less distinct, having dulled and fused with time and fading memory, but they were the foundation that her aunts had built upwards from. While she couldn't imagine what they were saying specifically, she knew nevertheless that they were saying she'd done the right thing.
And that it was, outrageously, monumentally, unbelievably stupid.
She wished that the right thing hadn't come with this particular consequence. Not getting arrested, she'd expected that - but being stuck in an interrogation room, alone. She'd seen this part of the movie before - they were sweating her out, making her feel isolated and all that. It wasn't working, primarily because her aunt had taught her long ago to only say the word 'Lawyer' whenever she spoke to a cop, and secondarily because once she quit imagining how her aunts would read her the riot act, she busied herself with imagining how this was going to affect her schooling. She just had to hope that she was so low-profile that Roman Torchwick wouldn't even know she existed, let alone care about her, and that subsequently the police would be willing to write this off as a dumb rookie stunt.
When one of the cops finally returned, she had come to the conclusion that, worst case scenario, if this got her expelled, she would move to a different country and try one of those schools. Shade would definitely take her, they took anyone. Atlas would probably accept her, criminal record and all - they were only more desperate for an all-Huntsman military after the second Faunus Rebellion. She could do six years' service, and there was probably an argument for the idea that going the Atlesian Soldier route would be better, in some respects.
"Gonna sing me anything else?" The cop asked, sitting down in front of her.
"I want a lawyer."
"I heard that one before, but how about we try a different song?" The cop asked, his tone different from when he'd spoken to her earlier, causing her to blink, and look at him more closely.
From the tremble in the man's hands, she would have thought he was nervous, if she didn't then realize his voice had been completely steady. A look at his eyes made her realise he was excited, amused even, but about what?
"I know you're an island girl, and all, but there's no way you don't know whose guys those were." Said the man, leaning forward over the table.
Oh. "I want a lawyer." She sighed. She knew where the amusement and confidence was coming from, and his every action was only serving to confirm it.
He gave her a smug grin, one that said 'you precious, stupid kid'. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, and grinning at her smugly. "You either do understand what's happening, and you're being difficult, or they make you kids dumb in Patch."
I'd say I should have seen this coming, but I hate puns. Ashley wasn't surprised he was dirty as much as she was surprised she actually had seemed to trip Torchwick's radar. Or, looking at him and his smug grin, she realized it might instead be some low-level thug that had gotten himself a badge and now felt like king of the world. Given how he set his shoulders and lifted his chin, she bet on the latter.
"Listen, kid, here's how it's going to -" Before he could start, the door crashed open, startling the both of them.
In the frame of the door stood an older, rougher looking cop. He was breathing heavily, his eyes were wide and manic, his face was flushed and was streaming sweat. He hadn't just ran here, he'd full-on sprinted from wherever he'd been!
"What did -" The man gasped, trying to take control of himself. "Did you -"
Ashley blinked confusedly, turning back to the first cop, who was looking at the newcomer like he had grown a second head.
"I'd just started. I was about to -" Said the first cop, before being interrupted by the second crossing the interrogation room in two strides and leaning down low. He moved fast and jerkily, as though trying to hide the fact that he was a walking bundle of nerves.
To his credit, the man was good: He leaned right into the first cop's ear and spoke so quietly as to be practically inaudible. Unfortunately for him, he didn't face away from Ashley when he did it, and so reading his lips was child's play:
"I just heard back from the Gardener. He says Ashley Lilly's on the Boss' whitelist."
The effect those words had on the first cop were immediate. He did a double take, his eyes going wide. His face paled as the second cop nodded, wordlessly confirming that he had, indeed, heard him right. The interrogator turned back to Ashley, his expression having shifted from smug confidence to looking like a rat that had just been bullying a lion's cub. Both the cop and Ashley looked back to the rougher cop in unison, the former with a growing look of sheer panic, the latter with a growing look of confusion.
Whitelist? Ashley thought, turning the word over in her mind. What is that? Why is my name on it? Why does that scare him? No - both of them! The second man seemed just as terrified as the first, but with the way he was focusing more on the interrogator than Ashley, it seemed that fear was more for whether or not the guy had done something he couldn't take back. What's a Gardener? Was the last thing she could ask herself before both of the cops left the room as though it were on fire.
Left alone again, all Ashley could think was: What the hell just happened?
Five minutes later she was outside again, not a single word was spoken to her beyond telling her she was free to go, don't cause trouble, and here's a bag with all of her stuff. The only new information she got between then and now was hearing the raised, irate voices of the thugs she'd been arrested for attacking.
To make things even more bizarre, the cops locked the station door after pushing her through it!
Her head was spinning so badly that when her scroll rang, she picked it up on auto-pilot, only to hear:
"Ashley Guilliman-Lilly, what's this I hear about you being arrested?! You couldn't walk two miles after your tournament without getting into trouble?!"
"Oh boy…" She cringed. How the hell was she going to explain this to her aunt? "You wouldn't believe me if I told you?" A part of her wondered how Ecru had even heard about this, but then she remembered that this was the same woman who was known by every hospital on Patch and several in Vale as 'Will call if her child doesn't come home on time'. Ashley was even convinced to this day that Ecru had hired a private investigator to follow her when she got her first boyfriend.
"SO YOU WERE ARRESTED?!" Ashley thought she could hear her yelling from the restaurant. She could almost see her other aunt patting Ecru on the shoulder, and her ancient service dog rubbing his head on her leg, trying to calm her down her legendary temper. "WHAT PRECINCT ARE YOU AT?! WHAT DID YOU SAY?! WHY DIDN'T YOU USE YOUR SCROLL CALL -"
"They let me go." Honesty was the best policy, especially with a woman who had once very nearly become a Huntress, and had decades of pent up energy she was always looking for an excuse to release. Furthermore, Ashley just couldn't bring herself to lie to either of her aunts - loud as she was even approaching her fifties, it was just proof that 'Auntie Ec' cared, and as lethal as she was, Srebro paradoxically couldn't hurt a fly, and so lying to her felt like tricking a puppy.
The words had the expected effect: Ecru stopped cold, the line going silent. Ashley was ready to swear she could see her blinking, her head recoiling, as her brain tried to process her niece's words.
"What?" Ashley could imagine, after that flat word, Srebro was even more confused than Ecru. She could practically see the Huntress lifting her hands, silently asking for an explanation.
Ashley cast a brief glance over her shoulder at the precinct. "Yeah, they… Let me go." She repeated, starting to walk back in the direction of the restaurant.
"Just like that?" Ashley didn't need the sound of hair scraping over the receiver to know Ecru was shaking her head, trying to dislodge the incongruent news and get the gears spinning again.
"Just like that." Ashley repeated, hefting the bag onto her shoulder. "Shot in the dark: Do you know what a criminal whitelist is?"
There was a few moments of quiet as Ecru consulted with Srebro, then: "I can guess from context clues, but how would that apply to you?"
"Good question. The cops didn't want me to know about that, but, well - you know how that goes."
"Yeah, I do, now keep going. Are you on your way here?" As frustrated as Ecru was, Ashley still heard a note of reluctant pride in the woman's voice.
Ashley confirmed she was making her way to the restaurant, and continued with the story. As short as it was, she was nevertheless kept talking for the entire walk from the precinct to the restaurant. She smiled at the server, who brought her to the table where her aunts waited. Only when Ecru physically laid eyes on her did she allow the scroll call to end, and only then to lunge to her feet and start checking Ashley for injuries.
"I just finished fighting rookie Huntsmen all day, Auntie Ec. I'm pretty beat up!" She laughed, sharing a knowing look with her other aunt, who just smiled, and idly pet the ancient service animal sitting under the table.
"Hush!" Ecru admonished, wiping away a dried streak of blood from a welt on Ashley's cheek. "When you move into your dorm, I'm not going to be able to do this any more, let me have my fun!"
"Oh, so this is fun!" Ashley stuck her tongue out, while idly noting that as much as Ecru was checking her injuries, she also seemed to be patting her down. "Looking for anything specific?" She asked.
"Yeah - the Lady!" Ecru's response was so immediate that, to anyone else, it would have sounded truthful - but to Ashley, who had both lived her entire life with the woman, and had a semblance practically custom-made to notice these things, she noticed the briefest hesitation before Ecru spoke. More than that, she noticed in the background Srebro's attention briefly flick from her, to Ecru, then back, in a way that suggested it was more intentful than just naturally looking at the speaker in a conversation.
Frowning, Ashley held up the bag. "Oh, I get it now. You're not checking me over, you need to make sure I didn't break the bat!" She said, playfully.
"It's not a bat, it's a Lovely Lady, and of course, baby - you just let yourself get beaten up all day and then you got arrested. I know you don't take care of yourself, but my Lovely Lady?" Ecru took the bag and winked at her niece. "Well, I have to hope you love me enough to not disappoint me that much."
Ashley rolled her eyes and sat down at the table across from them. Blue got up and padded over to her, his old, white-haired tail lazily swaying back and forth as he rested his head on Ashley's knee. She didn't hesitate to pay him his due, lightly cooing at him as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ecru rifle through her bag.
Does she think I've been bugged? Ashley wondered, even as Ecru pulled out the old, but well-maintained baseball bat.
As Ecru examined it with a careful eye, Srebro picked up the conversation.
"I wonder if you'll get our old dorm?" She said, a wide, wistful smile on her face. "Check under your bed when you get there." She placed a hand over Ashley's. "When we were there, Myrtle went under her bed and pried loose a bunch of floorboards. She did it to hide the things she stole, but when we caught on, she gave us all a little hidden stash so we'd keep quiet."
Ashley knew she was being distracted. As demure as her aunt was, she wasn't stupid - but neither was Ashley. She'd been raised by these two, she knew their tells as though she'd been reading them with her semblance. She considered allowing it to happen - it was rare that they would bring up their old team unprompted, and dammit she was curious about the question she was being prompted to ask. But eventually she decided it would just be best to confront this head on and hash… Whatever this was out, calm down Auntie Ec, which in turn would assuage Aunt Srebro, then they'd have a lovely dinner interrupted only by occasional bouts of bleeding into her food.
"Alright, what's the deal?" Ashley asked, taking the quieter aunt's hand while she looked at the more concerned-looking of the two.
Ecru was silent for a moment, her eyes briefly snapping over to Srebro, before she sighed, and stowed the bat back in Ashley's bag. "We used to be friends with team RWBY, we told you that, right?" Ashley remembered a few of the stories, but with the advantage of age, had come to believe her aunts had just been exaggerating for the sake of a much younger her, caught in the grip of a young girl's hero worship. "I can't say we talk to them very much often, but I've seen Ruby on the news enough to know that she's only grown up, she hasn't changed. She and her team, alongside our old leader, once fought Roman Torchwick, back before…" She nodded vaguely over her shoulder. "He's a kingpin, Baby. He never forgets things. Call me paranoid, but I'm just a little worried he's the type to look into any kind of connection he can use to get back at his enemies."
Ashley blinked, slowly straightening up as her face settled into a frown. Her surprise wasn't from what Ecru had said, so much as it had been from the fact that Ecru had just lied. Ashley could all but literally see it in her eyes - they weren't as bright as normal, it looking almost as though this were an old -
"Ashley Guilliman-Lilly, you better not be doing what I think you are."
Over a decade of instinct and lessons snapped Ashley out of her state. Even quiet and whispered, she knew that tone - if she kept doing what she was doing, there would be trouble the likes of which Srebro couldn't soften. This momentary snap back to reality was like the mental equivalent to a train switching tracks, all but forcibly shoving her thoughts away from a darker, less sensible path, towards one that made slightly more sense:
It had to do with Goud.
If there was one person in the entire world that could make her aunts cagey, it was their old leader. They spoke more openly about Myrtle - the teammate that had just up and left the entire life - than they did him. Every time conversations even approached him, both of her aunts got quiet, never willing to admit that his death still haunted them decades later. Ashley had read about him - of course she had, given who her aunts were and the country she lived in - so she knew that he'd participated in RWBY's crusade against Torchwick. Her brushing even tangentially against Torchwick, so hilariously soon after being accepted into Beacon, had probably dredged up some bad memories in the two. Made them a bit jumpier than normal.
Those thoughts, however, soon led her to a revelation - one she felt would put her aunts at ease.
"I don't think that's it, Auntie Ec."
Ecru blinked, and eyed Ashley. "Oh?"
"Torchwick's the King of Crime, and he's had… What, twenty years to go after RWBY? I really, really doubt he'd try something so roundabout as to try and start something by going after the adopted niece of some old Academy friends. That would be like if someone wanted to get back at me, so they kidnapped my kindergarten teacher's dog." She shook her head, "no, I think the best solution is the easiest one: That's how he recruits people."
Ashley didn't fail to notice a deep sigh of relief from Srebro, but her attention was - as ever - stolen by Ecru's more open, loud response. "Recruits people?"
"Think about it: How better to get a Huntsman, or a Huntress on his payroll than to get them to owe him favors? To convince them he's not a bad guy by letting them away with getting his guys arrested?" After all, what was more reasonable? That a super criminal held such long grudges that he would look into hurting friends of friends of people that wronged him, or that he'd seen an opportunity in a struggling rookie Huntress, and was going to do her favors so she'd eventually be open to working for him? To anyone else, it would actually be an enticing offer - it would be an easy, lucrative life, especially since the odds of Torchwick having to go up against a heavy hitter were effectively zero, these days.
Ashley wasn't all too happy that Ecru seemed to be putting on airs as she crossed her arms and leaned back. She wanted it to look like she was considering the idea - that she was buying it, even! - but Ashley knew her too well, and even if she didn't, by this point she could get a serviceable read on anyone. The idea occurred to her to just go for the kill, to invoke Goud's name directly and promise what happened to him wasn't going to happen to her, but she saw something new bloom in Ecru's eyes: Determination. She'd made a decision, and was about to follow through on it.
Just as she leaned forward to talk, Srebro grunted and shook her head, forestalling the brash woman's action long enough for the two to meet eyes. In Srebro's expression, Ashley could see another addition to a conversation the two had been having for a long time, and in her eyes, she could see the woman simply telling the other not to do what she was going to.
For just a moment, Ashley wondered if there wasn't something going on beyond just her aunts being over protective. That moment passed when reason kicked in - Srebro, ever the quiet one, was always the calming influence over Ecru. She was always the one that brought Ecru down from the highs of emotion, to the middle ground solution that the family would move forward with. In this instance, she was simply telling Ecru that Ashley was an adult, and was beginning her journey to becoming a Huntress. They couldn't protect her forever, she needed to make her own decisions, fight her own battles, and if need be, make her own mistakes.
Even if those mistakes included pissing off world-renowned kingpins.
Ecru took in a deep breath, and let it out in a calming sigh. She turned to Ashley and reached across the table, taking Ashley's hands in hers.
"Be careful, baby. Please." Ecru said, in that familiarly warm tone. "Remember who you are. What we've taught you." A beat passed, then she grabbed the bag and lifted it so the haft of the bat peeked over the edge of the table. "And I swear to the Brother Gods, if I find you working with Roman Torchwick, it's going in sideways."
Ashley couldn't help but laugh at that, and with the conversation sufficiently ended, after they ordered their food, she decided to bring things full circle.
"So what contraband did you all hide under your beds?"
Ecru grew a wide, evil grin as she slowly shifted her gaze over to Srebro, who shocked Ashley by actually turning a shade of scarlet.
After spending hours learning more about her aunts' younger, wilder escapades than she thought they were capable of, Ashley was escorted by the two to her hotel. They bid her farewell, and, thoroughly exhausted, Ashley was unconscious barely a second after her head hit the pillow. The only reason she didn't oversleep and outright miss the airship to Beacon the next morning was because she had a dozen alarms she'd set more than a week ago for this exact scenario.
She still barely made it, but the lethargy that caused this was wiped away more by the ship taking off than the coffee she drank. The swell of excitement in her heart as the ship took off was even more than she had been prepared for. Her excitement only grew higher as the ship climbed through the air and gave her a rare, birds-eye view of Vale from above. The grays and golds of the buildings and lights in the city contrasted brilliantly with the emerald greens of the forests that surrounded the kingdom, and she found herself joined by more than a dozen newly-minted rookie Huntsmen as the sun crested over the horizon, painting the sky red, and Beacon tower a bright gold.
Even from this height and this distance, she could make out the scars on the tower, intentionally left bare and bold by the headmaster to remind everyone of how close they had come to disaster, and what their overriding goal was as Huntsmen and Huntresses. Of course her aunts had told her about the War - it had been their first and greatest attempt to dissuade her from this life. It had worked, in a sense - she had been rightly terrified - but it had also cemented her even more fully in her desires to walk this path: Even if she'd never be a great Huntress, a 'good' one could still help a lot of people, and hold the line against something that bad.
Which, coincidentally, had been exactly what her aunts had done.
She landed an hour after boarding the airship, and was among the first people to rush off of it. In her excitement, she nearly sprinted right past the row of teachers and staff handing out informational packets and giving out instructions. Their first day wasn't going to be much more than wandering the grounds and making sure they would be in the main tower for Ozma's welcoming speech, their team selection would begin in the morning, and on and on they went. Ashley was pretty sure they specifically talked slower when they saw how she was brimming with excitement, but when she finally got everything she needed, off she bolted onto Beacon's grounds.
It was everything she'd dreamed it being: Big, expansive, the air filled with a power and energy she could scarcely describe. The meticulously kept grounds were a deep, emerald green, the walkways all a silver-gray concrete that never seemed to age or crack. The castle-like buildings all loomed over her, speaking both of their import and their age. She could feel the history and power that had filtered through this place for so many decades! The legends that had all learned here! Whether or not she ever shared the same space in the history books as them, the simple fact that she was here had her on cloud nine. The air seemed to feel crisper, her step lighter, her smile easier.
Indeed, time even seemed to pass faster than normal. It felt like she hadn't so much as blinked before she was in the main hall, alongside all her fellow students, eagerly awaiting the Headmaster's entrance speech. She was still surrounded by strangers, and had only gone so far as to make the barest possible definition of 'acquaintance' through the day, she was so caught up in simply being here. The result was her being alone in a room filled with people, but she couldn't care less, as she craned her neck and searched for the strongest man in Vale.
He didn't disappoint - at least in so much as he did exactly as his reputation suggested he would: He made a simple entrance, walking through a staff door and onto a hastily erected stage. He introduced himself, and made the same speech they'd all heard a thousand different variations of: Welcome to Beacon, they're going to spend their time here learning and being tested, the world outside these walls would test them even more, he went on and Ashley, though she was a little ashamed to admit it, tuned it out for two things. First was a simple continuation of the fact that she was here! She was listening to the entrance speech - she was really here, it was really happening!
Second was new, enough to stun her and root her to the floor. When he started his speech, the headmaster made a point of scanning the room, appearing to give every single entrant a brief, but genuine look of appraisal, paradoxically stuck halfway between firm stoicism, and warm benevolence. She didn't even need to read the man to know the idea was to both get across that if there had ever been games, they stopped now, and to also let them all know that for all the seriousness of their paths, he was their teacher, and they were his students: Simply being here made him proud of them. This was all well and good, and matched pretty much everything Ashley had read and studied in her years of trying to get this far, but what caught her off guard was the fact that when he landed on her, not only did he spare her more than a brief glance, but he actually blinked and stumbled over his words! It wasn't enough to get everyone's attention - truly, Ashley only noticed it because he'd been speaking for several minutes by that point, and any break in cadence and patterns were as subtle to her as an explosion.
Trying to parse this was what numbed her to the rest of the entrance speech. Had he seen something in her? Or was that the effect of making eye contact with a Huntsman Academy's Headmaster? This man was one of the four strongest people on the planet. He alone was probably worth a few score Huntsmen and Huntresses, even the legendary teams should have trouble stacking up to him, so in that respect it made sense that holding his attention - even for a moment - would be like getting hit by a speeding truck. Something about that rationalization failed to hold water, however - but she couldn't quite nail down what.
She wasn't even able to refocus after this. It felt like she hadn't so much as blinked, and the speech was over. He was walking off the stage, and people were beginning to stream to locker rooms to change into their sleeping clothes. Ashley almost joined them, but something stopped her, a realization that she had an opportunity right now - one she might not get again:
Everyone in her year was concentrated in the great hall. Nobody was or should be expected to still be outside, and everyone was getting ready to camp out here. Among other things, this meant that the academy grounds would be empty, as any other students here already had assigned dorms and were gathered in theirs. The thought of the academy at night, effectively all to herself, was enticing, but not as much as the thought that soon came to dominate her mind: With every first year student in the great hall, that meant the freshman dorms she soon slinked off to would be completely empty.
Including her aunts' old dorm.
Of course the door no longer had the rainbow 'GEMS!' she had seen pictures of, but the number remained the same. There had been a brief concern that it might be occupied, so she did at least knock when she got there, only to feel stupid afterwards when she remembered that these were the freshman dorms: They were going to be empty until the teams were put together. So, she whipped out her scroll, adopted a comedic expression, took a picture of herself in front of the door, and let herself in.
It looked exactly like it was: A musty dorm room that hadn't been lived in or aired out for several months. Four beds spread across the floor, several closets, and one bathroom to share. It was fairly nondescript in this manner, and even unremarkable. Despite this, it still felt significant - she was in the very room her aunts had studied and lived in! The centerpiece of all of their old school memories and stories, the origin for Srebro's entire career. She wouldn't go so far as to say it felt like she belonged there, but the combination of her being at Beacon, and its significance to her aunts, just left her feeling giddy to be here.
She entered the room, and though there was little to see, she still wore a wide smile and wandered about. She flopped down on one of the beds, and imagined her aunts and their friends occupying it. She imagined a healthy Ecru, chasing people around like a hellion with her Lovely Lady. She imagined a younger Srebro, as gentle a giantess then as she was now - when she wasn't fighting, of course. She called to mind the pictures she had seen of Myrtle, and wondered if all the stories of her kleptomania had been exaggerations, or if reality had indeed been stranger than fiction.
Before she could go any further however, thinking about Myrtle brought to mind the previous night - specifically, the stories they had told about the piles of contraband they had acquired over their year in Beacon. If they were to be believed, there was no one sneakier than Myrtle Lake, before or since, so Ashley actually wondered if their stashes had ever been discovered and repurposed in the years since. Now with something specific to look for, she dove under one of the beds and started rooting around, using her scroll's flashlight to illuminate the dark, dusty area.
If she hadn't had her particularly 'useless' semblance, Ashley simply would not have noticed the seam in the floorboards. Even then, she'd had to reach out and press down on more than one area before she finally found the portion that was actually loose, and the effort necessary to reveal the hidden compartment suggested to her that the dorm's many subsequent occupants had had just as much difficulty discovering them.
If they ever did… Ashley thought, as she blindly reached into the hole in the floor.
She found a bag, and upon retrieving it, was certain it had to be Ecru's - the sheer amount of color and glitter was a dead giveaway. Her astonishment at finding this artifact was matched only by her eagerness to open it up and discover that, indeed, her aunts hadn't been lying: She had spent her year acquiring a healthy stash… Of stolen workshop tools.
Mundane, but also appropriate: Ashley had been long since convinced that if someone had given Ecru carte blanche to steal anything and everything she wanted, all she would have had the capacity to imagine would be a lifetime supply of Blue's dog food. Ashley had known how obsessed her aunt was with the bat, but seeing how far back it went managed to give it a whole new dimension.
Shaking her head, she took a picture, and was busy trying to think of something witty to caption it when she moved to the next bed. This one's stash had been even more difficult to find, leading her to assume that it couldn't have been Srebro's. The debate of whether it had been Goud's or Myrtle's was solved when she found an eclectic stash of study guides, test booklets, a pile of lien, some silverware and desiccated sweets, and a few books stolen out of the library. What caught her attention most however were the six different scrolls and thirty separate CCT Cards for those scrolls. Ashley wondered for a moment what on Remnant Myrtle needed with that many different burners, until she found a notebook that revealed the mystery: She'd been running a racket! She was selling burners to students and through those burners was further selling the answers to tests. The notebook was filled with names of who owed her what and why. Her aunts hadn't been kidding - they really had been bunking with a mini-Torchwick!
Ashley snapped a picture of Myrtle's things and wondered if there had been any duplicity behind her becoming a Huntress, or if it was just a case of a good woman with bad hobbies. She approached the next bed and ducked under it - this one's stash was practically not even hidden at all, and was filled with notebooks. Ashley found herself pausing when she retrieved them and recognized Srebro's handwriting, actually wondering if all the teasing and jabbing last night had been true: If Srebro actually had assembled a stash of self-made pornography.
These thoughts were dashed immediately when she built up the courage to open a random notebook to a random page. What caught her attention first was a picture that fell out of the notebook; examining it, she found it was a candid image of a young man, clearly taken when he thought no one had been looking at him, given the dour expression on his face. His face was mostly hidden behind an ancient-looking scroll, at which he was glaring, mid-type. He looked so different from the other pictures she'd seen of him that, were it not for the sunglasses and the swept-back mop of dark hair on his head, Ashley wouldn't have recognized Goud Etiolate. She turned her attention to the notebook, and then saw a rough but nevertheless recognizable sketch of the very picture she'd just been looking at, and couldn't help but grin. She never knew Srebro had liked to draw!
Deciding that of everything she'd seen thus far, this was the first thing truly worth looking through, she replaced the picture and opened up to another page. Sure enough, another picture slid out, also of Goud. This one seemed to have been taken partway through GEMS roughhousing with each other, as Ecru was on Goud's back, a pillow in each hand, while Myrtle could be seen as a blur leaping off of the wall. Myrtle's face couldn't be seen, Ecru's face was a wild expression of battle and triumph, on Goud's was one of mild panic, as he seemed to be beginning to lose his balance and tumble. As expected, when she looked at the notebook, there was another sketch of the picture. On a hunch, she put down this notebook, and grabbed another, flipping through it and finding pictures and sketches of Ecru, while the third was filled with Myrtle. Ashley had a good idea of how Ecru had become convinced of the notebooks' lurid nature - she could all but see Srebro hugging the notebooks close to her chest, blushing furiously and refusing to let anyone look at them.
Smiling, Ashley decided to keep these ones, and after emptying it out, put them in the bag that had held Ecru's tools. Now, she was left with one last bed, which she crossed the room to reach. While she had loved most getting to pick apart the pasts of her aunts, and had gotten a kick out of seeing a little crime-queen in the making, she had to admit there was a certain part of her that was really curious about this. Everybody was a person, even legends like Ruby Rose still had those parts of themselves that weren't as neat and tidy as the CCT would make one believe, so she was curious to see what someone like Goud Etiolate kept hidden under his bed.
The results were bizarre.
It was one bag, inside of which she found something that utterly blew her mind: A plastic and glass scroll. She was pretty sure these had gone out of production over a century ago with the advent of holograms! She only knew about them at all because of old movies! How did Goud have one? Why? And aside from obviously looking like it hadn't been touched in twenty years, it was actually in remarkable condition! The buttons clicked, the rubber case was still spongy and pliable, nothing rattled around when she gave it a light jostle. She just removed a layer of dust and had been transported back a hundred years ago! Not to be outdone, deeper in the bag was a plastic and glass tablet!
What, was he one of those oldster types? She wondered, a disbelieving smile on her face as she examined the two ancient devices. Some strange, unrecognizable text on the plastic part of the tablet caught her attention, before the answer to her question came to her, and it caused her to lower the tablet. Oh… Right. Her smile faded a bit as she recalled one of the few things her aunts had ever openly told her about Goud. Despite his reputation, he was, according to them, rather cagey about his pre-Beacon days. All they had ever been told was that he'd done bodyguard work as a licenceless-Huntsman, and that he'd come from a village that had been destroyed by Grimm. Under that auspice, it suddenly made sense why he'd have such ancient tech: Things that old may very well have been all his village had access to, and were all he had been able to rescue from it. Of course he'd treasure and hide them - they were home to him! Or at least memories of it.
This hypothesis was what colored her interpretation of the rest of the things she found in Goud's bag: A small metal case, inside of which was a strange looking CCT card, several cables and chargers for the PNG Scrolls - wow they were old! - an empty leather billfold, several colorful patches with various designs sewn in, and three glass coins with strange designs and markings on them.
She suspected the 'CCT Card' might actually be a data card - she was pretty sure PNG Scrolls predated the CCT Network - and was actually a little curious about what might be on there, plus what might be stored locally on the scrolls, but decided that it might not be proper to dig too deep, there. While the picture might have been candid, and just one among many Srebro had taken, Goud had been glaring at the tablet, the things she would find in there could very well be equal parts village memories, and an emotional anchor for him. Some kind of 'make sure I remember why I fight' deal, like in the movies. Even if she was wrong, what else could she reasonably expect to be in there? Some deep revelation about a martyr her aunts had known for a year? He'd been a teenager, it was just as likely that half of everything in there was porn.
A thought occurred to her, as she turned the scrolls around in her hands. Maybe when she had her first long weekend, she'd take these to her aunts. To the best of her memory, Goud's body had never been found, but his school friends had held a symbolic burial for him on Patch. Maybe it would be a good idea to at least have something there that wasn't just a tombstone? Maybe it would even help give her aunts a bit of closure?
Liking that thought, she abandoned the ancient tech and picked up the patches. She couldn't divine any meaning from them, they were all just bars of color. One had a few stars on it, but aside from that there was nothing noteworthy beyond how strange they looked. She dropped those back in the bag and then picked up one of the glass coins, but found that this was just as elusive as the others. It was just a glass coin with a flower on its face. Something about it rang familiar though, enough to prompt her to at least keep one of the coins in her pocket, and stow the rest of Goud's things back in the bag, her initial excitement significantly cooled by the likely reality that she was holding everything that remained of Goud Etiolate's entire society.
Or maybe I'll look up where his village was… Bury them there, some day? She thought, as she consolidated the bags into one. She liked the idea of trying to help close the book on her aunts' darkest memory, but she knew well and good that it was one that still haunted them almost two decades later. Would this help at all? Or would it just reopen old wounds?
Shelving those thoughts, and finishing stuffing Goud's bag in on top of Srebro's notebooks, she instead turned her mind to better ones. At least it wasn't all bad. She could just imagine the excited look on Ecru's face, and the scandalized embarrassment on Srebro's, when she sent the pictures. As she prepared them, she found herself eagerly looking forward to staying up tonight, looking through Srebro's notebooks and seeing the pictures and drawings.
A small voice in the back of her head told her she should do better to wait for a night when she wouldn't be needing to prepare for a life-and-death struggle in the morning, but this voice was interrupted by a louder, more present voice in her ears:
"I am pretty certain Freshman dorms are to be occupied tomorrow, young lady."
Although the voice was calm and even, its tone polite and even a little posh, it nevertheless startled Ashley so much that she gave a small shriek of alarm. She whirled around to see a deeply tanned, muscular man with brown hair and the beginning signs of age on his face. His eyes were a darker shade of brown than his hair and held a mischievous golden glint in them. He wore a formal but functional suit, and loosely held a cane in one of his hands.
Even if she hadn't seen him barely an hour ago, Ashley would have recognized him anywhere: It was Beacon's headmaster.
And she was standing here, wide-eyed, tongue-tied, and she was pretty sure she was technically trespassing, and stealing.
He spared her having to come up with something to say: "I thought I recognized your name when it crossed my desk." He said, with a wide, warm smile. "Your registered weapon was another hint… But that you bee-lined for this room instead of sleeping was what finally told me I was right." He straightened up, his expression changing subtly enough to go from mischievous to outright jovial, as though he were greeting an old friend. "How is Miss Lilly?" Or, to be more accurate: The child of one.
"You remember her name?" Up close, and with her full attention, Ozma's face was one of the most bizarre things she'd ever seen. He was incredibly expressive, she could immediately understand what he was trying to convey moment-to-moment, and yet his muscles hardly even moved enough to be considered a micro-expression!
"Trite as it may sound, I remember the names of every student to attend my school, even before I ascended to my current role." A beat passed, in which got to see another display of the bizarrely static way in which his face changed from one expression to the next. It was almost like she wasn't talking to a human, but rather an animate, ancient, statue. "And I must admit, there were three students that year who were rather adept at overpowering a room with their lungs. Your aunt was second on that list."
Ashley blinked, "who was first?"
"Yang Xiao Long." The same strangely static shift of expressions, now to wistful nostalgia. "Just as energetic and loud as your aunt, but unlike her, Miss Xiao Long's team tended to feed into her displays, as opposed to pulling her ear when she got carried away." It was almost like looking at a stop-motion video: The motions were smooth, they weren't unnatural, but there was just that hint of stiffness to them, and they always ended a little abruptly. It weirded her out enough that she was almost able to forget that she was talking to Professor Ozma! "I must admit though, I never would have thought she would be the type to adopt."
"Oh - oh, um." She hadn't expected this to come up so early, let alone be so brazenly broached by the headmaster. "It was a favor for my other aunt. She met my Mom and Dad during the second Faunus Rebellion. I was born in Mistral, and they were worried as Adam Taurus got closer, that I might get hurt, so Aunt Srebro…" She shrugged, "suggested Auntie Ec could take me."
"A good woman she was, to do so." Said Ozma, with a sage-like nod. "As was your other aunt. Is she still the quiet one of the three?"
Ashley blinked, and tilted her head. "Three?"
Ozma waited a moment, before politely supplying: "Ecru, Srebro, and Myrtle, were the ones to survive the Fall, weren't they?"
"Oh!" There was something strange about the way he looked then, his face had grown even more stiff. "No, she… Well, we don't really know what she did, after Beacon." Given what she found under her bed, Ashley wouldn't be surprised if Myrtle had decided to become one of Torchwick's lieutenants. She certainly had the knack for it. "But yes, Aunt Srebro is still very much the quiet one."
She could tell that he could tell that Myrtle was a sensitive topic, and that he deliberately avoided continuing it. "I guess you're sending them some old memories, then?" He asked, his eyes raking over her. "And some new discoveries, I see." She noticed that, while his eyes did stop at the double-stuffed bag hanging over her shoulder, they had stuck for a moment longer at her gray eyes than anything else.
Ashley's brow twitched, approaching a thoughtful frown, but not going all the way. "Yes sir, they told me yesterday that Myrtle dug them all out some hidey-holes. I figured if she was as good as they say, they might not have been found until now, so there might be something in there worth sending back." It took her a moment to realize that this was the first time they'd met eyes since his speech, but unlike then, she hadn't been slammed by his presence or attention. Had something changed? Or had the earlier display been a part of the show?
Becoming more observant with each passing second, she definitely didn't miss Ozma's eyes flicking over to the side of the room she had just finished plundering, it had been the most fluid motion she'd seen out of him this entire time. It would have set the uncanny feeling she had at ease, if the snap of his eyes back to the bag on her back, and then back to her eyes, hadn't seemed deliberate in an off-putting way. She couldn't read him well enough to know if he was trying to point her somewhere, or if it had been an unconscious reaction to look at something he didn't even know he wanted.
But what could he have wanted that Goud would have hidden?
He let out a long, wistful sigh, before tapping his cane on the ground. "Well, I won't take up any more of your time, Miss Lilly. I merely wished to take an opportunity to see after some old students." A beat, "and to frighten a new one." He winked, before bowing. "I'll be off, but I would recommend you make haste. Morbid as it may be, I take great pride in the lethality of Beacon's initiation, and it would never be wise to tackle it without proper rest."
Ashley blinked, and he was gone.
Oh… Oh, I hate him. She smiled, having finally found the piece she was missing: The guy had been playing with her the entire time, messing with her, trying to put her on edge. The force of his presence during the entrance speech, this entire encounter, it had all been a game. He was the headmaster of an academy of real life superheroes, raising and teaching them to fight armies of ancient demons. By the time they graduated, they'd have enough experience under their belt that it would be harder to get under their skin, so he got his shots in while they were still green and wet behind the ears. This was how he had fun!
But I already love it here. She adjusted the bag over her shoulder, and made her way back to the main hall.