Hey, Fanfic is back!
I was worried I wasn't going to be able to upload this this weekend! Anyways, let's start the story (well, the fifth chapter of the... y'know what? Never mind).
Start Chapter 5
Jaune's vision is blurry when he, groggily, opens his eyes, and tries to take in his surroundings.
He's… having trouble remembering just where it is he's at.
What had he been doing? He'd been with the paper pleasers, and then…
Team RWBY. The Curious Cat. Neo. The Blacksmith.
Atlas.
Cinder.
Tyrian.
It all comes flooding back into him, and he tries to sit up, to stand, to draw a weapon.
Instead, he's held in place by thick rope, wrapped in multiple places around his body.
Calm. He forces himself. Get your bearings, then worry about getting out of this.
The room he's in is small – not a room, he quickly realizes, but the passenger area of a commercial bullhead. He's tied to one of the chairs against the very back wall, as far as he could be from the cockpit, which is directly opposite him.
He can't see anything through the window of the cockpit door, which has been purposefully darkened. That, or there's a board of some kind attached to it.
Either way, Jaune can't see through it. That's the important part.
He scans for Crocea Mors next, before realizing that it would be incredibly foolhardy to leave his weapon anywhere within Jaune's reach. More than likely, it's in the cockpit, alongside…
Yes. He's remembering now. It's coming back to him, even past the fog hanging over his mind.
He and Tyrian had dueled within that alley. Dueled for a few minutes. He'd been good, but not quite as crafty as the Tyrian of Jaune's time.
Jaune had thought he might even win.
And then…
Well, Tyrian had abused the fact that he had nothing to lose, while Jaune very much did.
He'd taken Cinder hostage, and then–
Shit, Cinder!
He scans the room again, and sees no sign of her. that's not particularly surprising. If anything, separating the two prisoners is the smart thing to do in a scenario like this one.
It doesn't mean Jaune has to feel good about it.
He lets out a breath, trying to keep himself from panicking. It won't do him any good. The real problem with that is that he's still dealing with the mental fallout that the Ever After had inflicted upon him, which means that in terms of mental stability… well, he's lacking more than a little.
He struggles against his bindings, trying to find the weakest point. He's able to isolate that the seat he's tied to has a sharp-ish corner where the metal of the backing meets the plastic of the backrest. If he can grind the rope against that spot for an hour or two, he might–
"Ah, ah, ah. I wouldn't, if I were you."
Jaune's attention snaps upwards, towards the door at the front of the bullhead.
Lo and behold, there stands Tyrian Callows.
He's nursing a black eye, and what seems to be a bruised diaphragm, but other than that, he's fine. Jaune hadn't managed to crack the man's aura before he'd taken Cinder hostage, and all but forced Jaune to acquiesce to his orders.
But he had been going even up until then, albeit barely.
He blames not being able to win against a much weaker Tyrian on having to use Cinder's – or Rhodes', again, he doesn't know – blade. The balance had been entirely off compared to Crocea. Not terrible, but where Crocea is a straight sword, the one he'd been stuck with had been a curved weapon. It's much more apt for flips and spins, the kinds of theatrics that Jaune's more down-to-earth style has no space for.
It had hampered him rather severely.
Even so, given he'd had Cinder to guard, and she'd not been in any state to resist Tyrian…
It's likely this outcome had been all but preordained the moment Tyrian had caught their trail.
"What do you want?" Jaune asks, hoping to get a bit more information out of the man. "Where are you taking us?"
"Oh? Us?" Tyrian tilts his head. "You believe you are not the only passenger aboard this flight?"
"I know I'm not. Cinder's here as well, isn't she?"
Tyrian smirks. "Indeed. Though perhaps you would've known as much, given I as much as told you I was there for her. She's in the cockpit, handling her… injection a bit worse than you are, I'm afraid."
Jaune's eyes widen. "What did you–"
"Well, you've been injected with venom from the end of my tail." Tyrian explains, seeming almost giddy. "So has the young child, as I said. I gave the both of you an antidote, but only enough to make sure that the two of you don't keel over on the way to my Goddess' domain. And that was all the cure I had. For my amusement, guess the only other place on Remnant you can find it?"
Jaune has some idea, as much as it concerns him.
"…The place you're taking us?"
"Aha! Got it in one." Tyrian gleefully squeals. "Yes. So, if you wish, for one, to survive beyond the next day or so, and for two, the girl to do the same, then you'd best sit still, and behave. Am I understood?"
Tyrian's almost daring Jaune to go against his orders. He likely wants Jaune to.
Jaune won't give him the satisfaction.
"Understood."
Tyrian frowns. "Phooey. Well, alright. Let me know if you'd like to do this the more fun way! My goddess never specified how many fingers you had to arrive with when I told her I was bringing an extra!"
Tyrian heads back into the cockpit, and as he opens the door, Jaune gets a quick glance at Cinder.
Her face is pale, far too pale. Her features are pallid, and she seems extraordinarily gaunt. She looks… almost worse than Qrow had, when he'd been afflicted with the same venom on their way to Mistral.
It makes sense. Qrow had been a forty-something year old man. Cinder is a child. She's smaller, which means the same amount of venom is going to affect her much more harshly than it does Jaune.
He bites down on his lower lip.
…It's Cinder. Some part of his brain tries to provide to him. She's a terrible person. We shouldn't feel bad for her.
But that's not right. Cinder will become a terrible person. But right then, in that moment, she isn't.
The girl in front of him doesn't deserve this.
She killed that woman and her daughters. Murdered them. Rhodes said as much.
She was being abused, Jaune argues back against his own self. Tortured day in and day out. Can you really blame her?
His mind doesn't respond, but it doesn't have to. Not truly.
Jaune's conflicted enough as it is, even without its intervention.
But there's nothing else for him to do. His only real choice is to settle in for the ride.
And hope he survives once they arrive at…
Well… wherever it is they're going.
/
Blake had forgotten – and been quite glad to, in truth – just how cold it could get on the icy tundras that lurked outside of the major settlements of Solitas.
It's the kind of cold that freezes one to their core, that has their bones feeling brittle, their muscles feeling weak. Blake knows she must project strength towards the others if she's to lead them, knows that they must have someone to look to in such conditions, but by everything, she's frigid.
As she makes it to the top of another embankment of ice and snow, she turns back around. Behind her, trailing by a good-few meters, are the one hundred or so figures from the SDC mining camp.
Most do not look particularly good.
The problem, currently, is that it's too late for Blake to reassess her decision to leave when she had. They've been traveling for four or so hours now, which means that the colony is many kilometers behind them.
With how exhausted they are, it would likely take another five or six hours just to get back.
So, instead, she raises her voice, and calls out to them.
"We'll stop as soon as we find a suitable clearing. Be on the lookout for anything that seems it could make a decent temporary shelter. That means caves, or even a relatively flat area."
She gets a few nods, but mostly, the crowd of Faunus following her just shiver in place.
Blake turns back around, and keeps moving.
It takes another hour or so before they find something actually suitable. It's not a cave, which would've very much been Blake's preferred spot – but then, finding one large enough to house their entire group would've been difficult. It's a flat clearing, and, when Blake shifts the ice and snow beneath her, she finds dirt and grass.
Had there been ice beneath them, they'd have needed to move. A fire would not have been able to be set up upon the ice, not and risk them falling in and dying within the frigid waters beneath. Dirt, however, they can settle on. It will allow them some small warmth in the night.
"We'll camp here." Blake announces. "We'll dig out an area first, to shield ourselves from the wind, and then after that, anyone who knows how to make a fire, you may begin doing so within the cleared area. It will reveal our location for quite a distance, but ultimately, there shouldn't be anyone following us. Warmth will be far more important than anonymity once the sun sets."
There's a general chorus of agreement at that, and Blake begins helping the others shovel snow and ice out of a ring that gradually grows over the course of two or so hours to be about ten meters in diameter.
It's going to be used as their main area of bedding. Far too small to fit them all comfortably, but in the cold, the close confines will do good to keep each of them warm.
"Eat." Blake speaks to them all. "Any food that you brought with you, eat it until you are well and truly full. You'll need the energy for the rest of the journey tomorrow."
Eventually, once that circle is dug out – they'd had to dig through a solid meter of snow and ice to reach the earth, but it honestly hadn't been as deep as Blake had feared it could be – Blake hops down into it, and helps the others in lighting a fire in the central point. The walls around them will help with obscuring them from the wind, and will also keep their fire relatively covered.
They'd taken almost all of the emergency supplies from the mining camp, including the supplies that had been left for warmth in case of a power outage at the plant. Mostly, that consisted of fire dust and other such amenities, which could of course be used to light a fire. But given that they'll be needing that dust for another purpose, they're instead going to put another of the emergency kits inclusions to use.
Those being flint and steels.
Blake draws one of them out, scrapes off enough thin bark from one of the downed trees that their hardiest had felled to have some kindling, and sets to work.
She has a modest fire going within ten minutes.
Over the course of the next hour, things gradually relax. It's clear that a large majority of their number hadn't quite understood why it was that they'd stopped when they did. The truth is that the already cold temperatures will be dropping to well below freezing during the night, and the howling winds, not to mention much-harder-to-spot Grimm – which would blend in with the snow and rocks due to their black and white coloration, even with their watchmen having innate night vision – will make travel perilous at best.
It's a far better strategy to simply hunker down, wait out the dark, and get up at first light.
In terms of supplies, they have a few emergency tents, all of which will be going to the ten or so children they have with them. Each tent should be able to fit a good five or so, which means that the other two tents can be given to those in the most potential danger of freezing.
That mostly means the elderly, and the sick. They don't have much of either, but one or two people are clearly already nursing the beginnings of a cold. They're given one tent to split, and eventually, the two or so older folk get the other. Their families get to rest in the tents with them.
That leaves the rest of them to toil out in the cold.
Blake rubs her hands together as quickly as she can, trying her best to retain warmth. She could burn her aura to keep herself from freezing, but the truth is that such is incredibly wasteful. Over the course of the night, she'd easily burn through her entire reserve, and then she'd be stuck without aura in the middle of the wilderness.
No. It's a far better plan to simply be cold now, and have her aura in reserve in case anything comes up.
After all, Grimm roam these wilds unimpeded.
Still, as the minutes turn to hours, and the sun fully sets, Blake takes a look at their little encampment.
It's small, and packed. There's not a square centimeter of the place that's not being taken up by someone, or their supplies. On top of the walls of snow about a meter in height, their guardsmen who'd volunteered to take the first shift, are watching the cardinal directions, their night vision more than enough to let them see for quite a distance.
Blake's going to get a few hours rest, likely three or four, and then wake up to take over for them. Another three people have volunteered to take second shift alongside her, and then once the sun begins to rise, they'll be making for Oaresberg.
It's… Blake hesitates to call it a true plan, since there's so much that could go wrong, but then, earlier that day, she'd been in the Ever After, dealing with the potential loss of Ruby, Jaune's dwindling condition, her newfound relationship with Yang, Weiss doing her best to hold everything together, and…
It's just… she's got a lot to think about all of a sudden.
She lets out a sigh, even as she leans back against the wall of snow and ice behind her. She's pushed one of the tarps they'd taken with them up against it so that she can sleep whilst taking up as little room as possible. What with the fire in the center, and the several other, smaller fires set up at intermittent locations, they already have very little room to work with.
Blake's sort of expecting things to quiet down, then. She'll get some sleep, wake up, guard the perimeter, and have to rouse everyone once the sun shows.
She's not expecting someone to sit down beside her.
"Wha–"
"Sorry." Eve Taurus holds up a hand to placate her. "Didn't mean to scare you."
"It's fine." Blake's too tired to pretend like that hadn't made her jump. "Are you alright? Where's Adam?"
"He's asleep in one of the tents with the other kids." Eve tells her, smiling despite the day's events. "He was so worried about me; didn't want me to leave his side. Hah…"
Blake smiles, too, only for her eyes to widen a mere moment later when she hears the sounds of sniffling.
She looks over and sees Eve is crying.
"I'm sorry," She rubs at her eyes. "I don't… I just… I keep thinking back to that moment, when they had the brand pointed at his face, and I… I just…" Eve purses her lips, trying to get control of herself.
It's not really like her, but… Blake shimmies a little so that their hips are touching, and wraps an arm around Eve, trying to offer some comfort.
"Thank you," The woman shoots her a watery smile. "I just… truly, thank you. For saving my son."
Blake nods, sort of awkward. "I would've done it for anyone."
"I know." Eve smiles at her. "I could tell. You have that look in your eye. You're a hero, well and truly."
Blake feels her face growing somewhat warmer. "I don't…"
"Where did you learn to fight like that?"
It's an odd, sudden question, not one which Blake had at all been expecting to hear.
"Ah, well…"
I learned much of what I know now from your son, about… six or seven years from now.
She can't exactly say that, though, and so she doesn't.
So, she goes with the truth, albeit leaving out a few things.
"I was taught by a variety of individuals. A figure I had an interesting relationship with, teachers in an academy setting, and several people with whom I was very close."
Eve nods her head. "I assumed you were a Huntress."
"I am."
"I see." Eve's quiet a moment. "I just… seeing you take them all out so effortlessly, it…"
Blake raises an eyebrow. "What is it?"
Eve's mouth hangs open, but no noise comes out. After a moment, she shuts it, and tries to hide the odd happenstance with a smile.
"Never mind. I'm sorry to have bothered you, Ms. Weiss. Thank you again for today"
The name throws Blake for a loop, before she remembers that that's the name that she'd given to them all.
Already regretting that.
"It was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing. It was everything."
And without giving Blake a chance to respond, Eve moves back over towards her one of the tents towards the center, likely where her son is sleeping.
And Blake is left alone, in the cold dark.
/
The Branwen Tribe breaks off from the village they'd been planning on raiding with a confused air about them.
That's mostly due to the fact that Raven Branwen, their leader, is now walking side-by-side with the woman she'd been fighting to the death with not an hour ago.
Yang, for her part, really wishes this hadn't been happening, either.
"So, uh–"
"Do not speak." Raven cuts her off, her eyes set dead ahead, having not looked at Yang since they'd stopped their little tussle. "We will speak once we make it back to camp."
This is all feeling kind of familiar, funnily enough. Yang had busted her way into the Branwen tribe's camp and gotten a one-on-one – well, two-on-one, given Weiss' presence – with her mother for the first time in her life.
She has a feeling things are going to go a bit worse this time.
Eventually, some thirty minutes later, the camp itself comes into view.
It's a bit more pathetic than the one that Yang had encountered a decade or so from now – that's weird, this whole situation is weird – but it's imposing enough, she supposes, for what the people living there are.
A bunch of blustering weaklings, hiding behind one rather strong woman.
Raven's tent is the only building – if such things can really be called that – in the whole camp that closely resembles Yang's memories of the place. Obviously, the Branwen camp moved several times a year, but even so, that central tent itself is nearly the spitting image of the one Raven had invited her into a decade or so from then.
…Guh, weird.
"Men, you're off duty until further notice." Raven announces, and a round of cheering echoes out across the camp as they enter into it. "Cooks, start on dinner. Do not disturb me unless someone is dead, or needs to be."
With that, Raven beckons for Yang to follow along behind her, and Yang, not wanting to start shit in the middle of enemy territory, sighs and follows along.
They walk into Raven's tent, and Raven unlatches Omen from off of her hip, setting it down beside her as she sits down on the floor, adjacent to the table in the center of the tent.
It's as clear a peace offering as Yang's going to get. She's abandoned her weapon – well, kind of – and is clearly gesturing for Yang to sit opposite her.
So, in the end, that's what Yang does. She doesn't take off Ember Celica, but then, she's currently stuck in Raven's camp, not the other way around.
One of them can afford to be somewhat blasé. The other can't.
"Alright," Raven starts, her eyes narrowing. "Speak. Who are you? Why do I have a portal to you?"
"Uh… well…" Yang really wishes the time she'd spent walking back here had helped her to come up with anything at all to say to her mother. As things are, she's got a whole lotta' nothin'.
"Not willing to speak?"
"It's uh… complicated?" Yang offers.
"Then uncomplicate it."
Yang scoffs. "Yes, because it's totally that simple."
Raven's brow furrows in annoyance.
"In case you hadn't noticed, you don't exactly have many options here. I've extended my hospitality–"
"Oh, lighten up," Yang groans out. "I get it; you're big and scary." Raven's brow furrows further. "Just give me a second, jeez."
"So that you can conjure up some lie?"
"Something like that, yeah."
Raven snarls. "You really think you're funny, don't you?"
"I know I'm funny." Yang corrects, enjoying the way her mother bristles. "There's a difference."
Raven reaches for Omen, and Yang holds up her hands in mock surrender.
"Alright, alright." Yang sighs. "I'm just struggling to really articulate this to you. It's uh… kind of hard to believe?"
Raven's face scrunches up somewhat. "I've been told some things in my life that seemed entirely incredible. Things that seemed fantastical, otherworldly. Impossible. I have been proven wrong nearly every time. Believe me when I tell you that no matter what you say–"
"I'm your daughter from the future."
And yes, just as Yang had thought, Raven does, in fact, look quite surprised.
"You… what!?"
"I'm your daughter, Yang Xiao-Long, from about…" Yang pauses to get a general estimate. "Twelve or so years from now in the future? Maybe more, maybe less?"
Raven just stares at her, her eyes wide, but her gaze blank.
"Helloooo?" Yang waves her hand in front of her mother's face, which earns her a smack on the wrist as the woman forces her away. "Hey, was just makin' sure you hadn't passed out or something."
"What are you…" Raven shakes her head. "Fine. So, you don't wish to tell me the truth."
Yang sighs. "No, I just did, like actually. Just now."
"Yes, sure." Raven spits. "How did you know my daughter's name in the first place?"
"Because I'm her?" Yang offers.
"Yes, right," Raven rolls her eyes. "How could I forget."
"I'm getting the feeling you're not going to believe me, even though you expressly just told me you'd believe me–"
"I said no such thing."
"It was implied."
Raven practically growls. "You're no daughter of mine, that's for sure. Perhaps that bastard brother of mine might have produced an insufferable whelp such as you, but I–"
Yang snickers.
"Would never have given birth to such a pathetic excuse for a Huntress."
"Yeah, sure," Yang just rolls her eyes. "Alright, what do you want to hear from me, then? I gave you the truth."
"You told me a lie."
"Okay, sure. I told you a lie, and I'm sticking with it." Yang shrugs her shoulders. "Now, what are you going to do?"
Raven seems to consider that a moment. "I should by all rights have you beaten, stripped of your valuables, and thrown out of my camp. That or ransomed off to your family."
"You'd have a hard time of that, given you're my family, and you seem pretty cheap."
Raven looks like she might pop a blood vessel. "But I am feeling generous. You may stay with us here in the Branwen camp."
"You know, you can just admit that you want to keep an eye on me because you're curious. You're allowed to do that."
Raven reaches up, massages her temples with one hand, and then says, "Y'know what? Get the fuck out of my tent."
Yang holds her hands up in the air, shrugs her shoulders, and does just that.
/
The Branwen's, it turns out, are quite the interesting bunch.
Interesting in this case meaning annoying, idiotic, but also, somehow, smart enough to know when to run with their tails between their legs.
Yang's established a sort of pecking order around an hour after being kicked out of Raven's tent. A few of the larger bandits had attempted to size her up, maybe try something with her. The first one to actually approach her had gotten his jaw rather clumsily rearranged, and since then, no one else had tried.
Good. At least they had self-preservation instincts.
…Yang's currently debating just what it is she's supposed to do now.
It seems easy to say that she should just leave. Wait until the middle of the night, hop one of the walls, and be so far gone that they'll not find her. Of course, that idea goes out the window the moment that Yang remembers that Raven has a portal to her, and can thus access her at any time anywhere forever.
A rather inconvenient thing to have to plan against, Yang can't help but feel.
So, no, running away is rather clearly not going to work.
She'd tried being honest. That had gotten her approximately nowhere. Raven might be a bit more open-minded than most people, knowing that their world contains magic, that there's a queen of the Grimm, and that she's well and truly immortal – or maybe she hasn't had that realization yet? Yang doesn't really know.
Either way, she doesn't quite seem ready to accept that her daughter has popped in on her from the future.
To be fair, Yang's fairly certain she wouldn't have believed that either, had it not happened to her.
But… now what?
She can try and come up with some other lie? Maybe pretend to be her dad's cousin or something? Yin Xiao-Long?
No, that still wouldn't explain the portal to her.
Honestly, Yang's surprised that Raven has a portal to her in the first place. She has one to Yang – this world's Yang – of course, but to have a portal to her suggests that such a development had been less about Raven forming a bond with her, and more about, perhaps, their shared genetics.
Actually, when Yang thinks about it, yeah, that makes sense. It's not like Raven had given a shit about her.
"I'm sorry." She remembers Raven saying at the bottom of Haven, in the Vault of Knowledge, with the Lamp in her hands.
…
Yang sighs.
Just then, a figure sits down beside her. Yang mentally prepares herself to rough up some other idiot – maybe she'll break this one's arm? – before she turns to see who it is, and–
"Raven!?"
Her mother turns towards her with a narrow gaze, her eyes hard, searching for something in Yang's own.
"I don't believe you."
"Uhm… yeah. You said that."
Raven wrinkles her brow. "And yet, your story does explain certain things."
"The whole portal thing?"
"I don't believe you're telling me the full truth… but even so, there's a way we can confirm whether or not you're telling me a lie."
Yang's eyes widen. "Wait, are you…"
Raven tilts her head to one side. "What? Am I what?"
Oh, right. Yang probably shouldn't know about the Maidens, or the Relics, given those are like super-secret.
But also, it would probably lend some credence to the whole 'I'm your daughter from the future thing' too.
"Are you talking about the Relic of Knowledge?"
Raven's eyes widen. "You… know of it?"
"I used it." Yang speaks, telling her the truth. "In the future."
Raven bites back a curse beneath her breath. "…No, I refuse to believe this. There's always another explanation."
Yang's pretty sure she might be able to overwhelm her mother with facts, with knowledge she has, but at the same time…
She's also not sure she wants to go giving Raven so much information.
As much as she's her mother, as much as she'd apologized the last time that they'd met…
Well, she'd been about to raze a small town to the ground not even three hours ago.
Forgive Yang for perhaps doubting the woman somewhat.
"Fine!" Raven finally speaks, shaking her head. "The two of us will go to Haven alone. We will use the Relic of Knowledge–"
"Is this really worth using one of the questions, though?"
"Quiet!" Her mother slams her hand down on the wooden bar they've been sat at, and it cracks it down the center. The person manning it rather wisely takes a few steps back, whistling innocuously. "I am putting an awful lot of faith into you, 'Blake Belladonna',"
"Oh, that's my girlfriend's name, I told you, I'm Yang–"
"And I expect you," Raven bowls right through her attempt at a correction, "to come along without complaint. Am I clear?"
"Uh… yeah sure." Yang shrugs. "I'm down. Not like I've got anything else to do."
"Good. We'll leave once the sun sets."
"Shouldn't we leave tomorrow, when the sun's rising."
"We move in shadow. Unseen."
"Wow, that might be the edgiest thing I've ever heard."
Raven's jaw is tighter than Yang had thought possible. "Do you want me to kill you?"
"I mean I'd prefer if you didn't."
"Then shut up!"
"Okay, okay," Yang tries to calm the woman down, but honestly, she can't resist tacking on one last little needle. "Oh, but uh… while we're out in Mistral, lemme' know if you see a cat faunus with legs for days and a killer ass. Cause that's my girlfriend. And I miss her."
Raven just lets out a wheezing sigh as she lets her head slowly droop down towards the cracked back beneath it, and then raises and lowers her head over and over, creating a staccato beat.
"What did I do to deserve another Qrow!?"
And Yang thinks, 'perhaps it was trying to destroy a village, and either ransom off or enslave its people?'.
Honestly, in terms of comeuppance, her mom's gotten off pretty light.
End Chapter 5
Alright!
I have like... nothing to say. At all. Actually that's a lie. I totally do.
We're starting to get a much clearer look at Jaune and Yang's potential future endeavors, even if Blake's still remain a bit clouded. As for Weiss and Ruby, more on them next chapter!
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