Well hello again!
Some news about the update schedule of this story (nothing too bad, tldr: might be a break next week) after the chapter!
Start Chapter 6
Weiss awakens in the inn that she and Qrow had decided to stay in at the first light of morning, and instantly, she's hit with a wave of nausea.
She has no real idea as to why, given she'd not ingested anything strange last night, nor had she done any odd exercises or maneuvers that might have upset her stomach, but as she begins to retch, she realizes that none of those things really matter if she's going to throw up anyways.
She makes it over to the room's trash can and unloads the meal she'd eaten the previous night into it. The vomit itself is a dark, murky color, and Weiss grimaces as she spits out the last of the mucus and stomach acid into the bin.
She'll have to empty it into the toilet at some point. That… won't be very fun.
She makes the putrid decision to handle such then and there, rather than wait. While she does, she thinks about what could have possibly caused such a thing.
She supposes it could simply be a random event, something caused by a variety of invisible factors, but it just doesn't feel right, at least to her. Either way, as she pours the bin out, washes it, and places it back down in the room, she decides that she really doesn't want to think about the logistics of her own vomit anymore.
So, she leaves the room.
As she exits, she's greeted by the sight of Qrow Branwen balanced against the wall opposite her doorway, and she rolls her eyes.
"Sleep well?" He asks, very clearly having been up a while.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did." Weiss tells him, and it is the truth, despite the throwing up debacle. "Did any information come in during the night?"
"Nothing major." Qrow sighs. "We've got a trail, but its faint. Nothing more than a direction, and honestly, that's pushing it."
"Explain."
"They've got footprints that lead north-northwest out of the murdered man's house. They don't belong to either of us, and there're small traces of blood in some spots. The victim's."
Weiss nods slowly. "So… we follow?"
"We would, except the trail cuts off barely ten meters later, once the ground goes from dirt to undergrowth within the tree line. After that, who knows, he could've done a complete 180 and gone in the opposite direction entirely."
Weiss purses her lips. "Not enough to follow, then?"
"No." Qrow admits. "It's not."
"Are we planning on following it anyways?"
Qrow raises an eyebrow. "And what gives you that idea?"
"Because you think I'm somehow involved in this." Weiss huffs out, letting her hands fall to her hips. "Which means you think I have some sort of lead that I'm not telling you about."
Qrow truly is younger, because in that moment his face shows so much. He looks almost offended at having been caught, like a child being ornery about being caught with their hand in a cookie jar.
"Alright, fine, I admit it." Qrow eventually grumbles out. "So? You got anything?"
"I don't." Weiss admits, "At the very least, I've nothing pertaining to Marcus Black."
Qrow doesn't look like he believes her, and Weiss can really only sigh. "But… I think we should investigate the place where the man's trail went cold. Who knows. We might find something that they didn't."
Qrow seems rather doubtful. "You think you're going to catch something that a team of trained professionals missed?"
"I don't think I will," Weiss clarifies, stepping by the man and moving towards the stairs that will take them out of the inn.
"But I just might."
/
It takes them a few hours to make it back to the house of the victim, and by this point, the entire thing has been all but cordoned off.
It is, in all fairness, in the middle of nowhere, and so it's not like such cordoning is inconveniencing anyone else. Even still, it fills Weiss with an odd sense of dread to see the crime scene blocked off, to know that a man had lost his life there no more than a few days ago.
She does her best to shake it off, and lets Qrow briefly take a look around.
"This is the trail," he says, pointing to a line of evidence that does, indeed, head off in the north-northwest direction. "You just want to follow it to the end, or?"
Weiss walks up to the first footprint, and kneels down. It's… a rather subtle thing, in truth. Even having a tiny marker indicating where the footprint itself is, she has trouble spotting it.
Weiss herself isn't going to be of any help here at all.
But her semblance might still be of use.
It's… very much a risk. But all in all, she knows that Qrow is someone she can trust. Despite how vulgar he can be on occasion, Ruby has always adored the man, and Weiss had begun to soften on him somewhat during their time in Atlas.
So, she decides that in order to get a tail on Marcus Black, she will do all that she can.
"Alright." Weiss clears her throat. "Take me to the spot where the trail cuts off."
Qrow hums out boredly, clearly not believing she's going to be able to do much of anything at all. Even so, he does what she'd asked. He takes her to where the undergrowth of the surrounding trees begins, and lo and behold, right at the start, is where the trail runs cold.
"This is it." Qrow drones. "If you've got some trick to follow him, then now's the time."
"Indeed…" Weiss sighs. "I'm not entirely sure this is going to work, but it very well may."
"Not sure if what's going to work?"
Weiss looks over at Qrow, meets his gaze. "I need you to not make a scene of what I'm about to do."
"Uh… I can't promise that."
"Okay," Weiss groans. "Then at the very least, I need you to be hazy on how this happened when you're asked about it later. I'm going to reveal something rather particular that I would prefer a minimal amount of people know about me. I assume you might have some certain things about yourself as well? Things you keep close to the chest for your own safety or assurance?"
She knows Qrow does, but Qrow doesn't know that. Even still, it seems enough of a call out – that from his perspective will likely appear accidental – for him to consider her words.
Qrow rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, lets out a beleaguered breath, and then nods. "Fine. Sure. I'll keep what I see to myself, provided you're not actively dangerous."
Weiss nods her head. "Alright."
In the next moment, Weiss draws Myrtenaster, and spins it so that it faces the forest floor below her. Then, she stabs down, and channels her semblance.
Specifically, she channels her summoning.
She has her eyes closed in concentration as she does this, but she can hear as Qrow gasps, and, presumably, takes a few steps back. She gets the feeling he either recognizes what she's doing, or has at the very least heard of it.
After all, the Schnee Semblance is rather well documented.
In the end, the creature she ends up summoning is an Ursa Minor. She's done as such in the hopes that she'll be able to take advantage of the creature's sense of smell. After all, it had been that very sense of smell that had, in their time at Beacon, drawn an Ursa towards Cardin and Jaune once the former had been slathered in sap.
She's never tried to get one of her summoned Grimm to lead her via something like this, but she figures an attempt is at least worth it.
As she stands, and the glowing, pale-blue Grimm looks down at her, awaiting her order, she instead turns back towards Qrow.
He's looking at her with wide eyes, and a slack jaw.
"That's… You're a Schnee!"
Weiss huffs. "Yes, well, it seems you've figured me out."
"Shit, I knew the hair was familiar, but…" Qrow shakes his head. "How the hell do you fit into the equation exactly? Didn't Nicholas only have the one child? You're only a decade or so younger than Willow, how are you–"
"My line is complicated." Weiss says, for lack of anything else to say. She can't exactly say she's her mother's daughter when her mother is, at this point, at most thirty-two or thirty-three. She'd already said she's 19, which means that her mother would've been, roughly, thirteen or fourteen when she had her.
Which is an impossibility, given Willow Schnee had been a public figure her entire life, and the media had documented just about every day of it.
If she'd had a teenaged pregnancy, such would've made the news worldwide.
"Let us simply say that things are complicated. I will not discuss this any further." She expects Qrow to attempt to get her to talk more about this later anyhow, but hopefully by then she'll have come up with a semi-believable story. "Now, shall we see if this will work?"
"Huh… Ruby Schnee, then?"
"…Something like that. If you want to call me anything, however, then please continue to call me Ruby White. I do not need the Schnee name attached to me." Weiss speaks, then looks up at the Ursa she's summoned, and gives it an order.
It snuffles briefly, seemingly trying to pick up the scent. Weiss isn't entirely sure what to expect. If a summoned Grimm would even have a sense of smell like a physical one, and whether or not it would be able to actually lead her along like she's hoping it will.
And yet, as the Grimm sniffs the ground, it raises its head, gives a quiet growl, and then begins walking much more westward.
"What's it doing?" Qrow asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I believe…" Weiss whispers out, almost uncertain.
"It's telling us to follow."
/
Ruby's desperately trying to pretend like she's not freaking out.
This is going… well, badly, really, but she's trying, okay!?
"So, uh…" Roman scratches at the back of his neck as the two of them walk further into the Emerald Forest, towards where Ruby's pretty sure the relics from initiation are supposed to be. "…Y'got any hobbies?"
"Oh, uhm…" Ruby's blanking. "I like… people?"
That could not possibly be any further from the truth. Ruby is what her sister calls a 'total introvert', meaning that she would much rather sit in her room all day and adjust Crescent Rose's specs than talk to another human being.
"Yeah, yeah, that's cool." Roman smiles, seemingly glad to have found a topic of conversation to stick with. "I've never really been all that good with people. Think you can give me some pointers?"
Ruby's fairly certain that the blind leading the blind would have more success than whatever the hell that would be.
"Uh, well, let's focus on initiation for now." She does her best to smile supportively, whilst also divert the conversation in a way that she'd like. "Just to make sure you were paying attention, what's our objective?"
"Huh?" Roman's brow furrows. "Uh… we're supposed to gather relics, right? And then at the end we get put into a team of four people or something?"
"Yep!" Ruby's glad that things seem not to have changed. "Got it in one."
"Oh, good," Roman chuckles. "I was worried I was way off or something."
They don't speak as much as they make their way deeper and deeper, as the trees grow thicker and thicker. In here, the occasional signs of wildlife are their only real companions. There are probably students all around them, but they're far enough away that Ruby can't see or hear any of them.
Ruby knows she should probably try and talk to Roman. Try and figure things out about him. Learn when exactly she is in… time? History? Ugh, this is so weird!
Honestly, the thing that keeps coming back to her is how little she knows about Roman Torchwick. She knows he'd been a crime lord/gentleman-thief at around the age of twenty-eight or so, and she knows he'd died via being eaten by a Griffon – a mental image that she's never been able to quite escape from or get out of her head – but…
Yeah, no, that's pretty much it.
He'd had Neo, she supposes, and because of his death, Neo had decided they were mortal enemies. But she'd not known that he'd apparently once been a Huntsman when he'd been younger!
That's a pretty crazy realization, even if it explains how he'd been strong enough to be able to hold off both Sun and Blake without much issue during their fight at the docks.
…Well, if she wants to learn more about Roman, she can probably just… ask.
"So!" Ruby suddenly blurts out, and Roman jumps in her periphery, evidently startled. She feels a bit bad about that, but continues on as if it hadn't happened. "Where did you go to school before this, Roman?"
"Oh, uh…" The boy – and now that Ruby's paying attention, she notices he really is a boy, probably a year younger than Ruby – seems rather flustered to have been asked as such. "Well, the truth is, I uh… didn't go to a combat school before this one."
Ruby's eyes widened. "Wait, really?"
"Yep." Roman seems quite sheepish about this, which is just… so different from the Roman Torchwick that Ruby had come to know during her own time at Beacon. "I uh… I grew up on the street, actually. Spent time in and out of orphanages all throughout Vale, and was even shipped all the way to Mistral a couple a' times."
"That… I didn't know, I'm sorry."
"Oh, no, it's no biggie," Roman tries to play it cool, but Ruby can tell he's a bit embarrassed about the topic. "Normally I try and pretend not to be some orphan kid, but uh… well, I figure if you and I are going to be teammates, you're probably going to know at some point, so it's better I just tell you the truth than come up with some big ol' lie, yeah?"
"I guess I just…" She pauses a moment. "Did your parents, uhm…" Ruby stops. "I'm sorry, I'm not going to ask about that."
"It's fine." Roman looks down and away. "I'll tell you about it later. Maybe. We'll see."
Ruby nods, and the two continue on.
The silence between them is no longer pleasant.
/
Eventually, they encounter their first Grimm.
It is, to be fair, not much of a challenge. A singular common Beowolf. About as easy as they come for a Hunter in training. Ruby's content to let Roman handle this, mostly because she's still trying to learn as much as she can about… well, everything.
And also, she doesn't want to reveal Crescent Rose just yet. She's pretty sure the teachers are watching this with cameras, and so far, she's avoided having to unfurl her scythe for any particular reason.
In theory, she can keep that streak going for a while.
"You got it?" Ruby asks Roman, expecting him to laugh, bluster, and then handle the beast with ease.
Instead, he chuckles nervously under his breath – which still probably checks off the first category technically, if not quite spiritually – takes a step back, and then says, "Ah, well… maybe you can get it?"
Ruby frowns. "I mean… I could. Why though?"
"Well, I just… wanna' see how my partner fights, that's all!"
"I kind of wanted to see the same from you."
Roman blanches. "Ah… well, okay, I guess."
The boy takes a step forward, reaching down to his hips and drawing the twin hunting knives from off of his belt. Ruby immediately pegs his stance as odd. It's not suited at all to taking on Grimm. Ruby would say it's much more anti-personnel in terms of balancing.
He doesn't have the stance to take a big hit, if necessary, like one might assume he would while fighting a Grimm.
Huh… weird.
Roman makes his approach, and the Grimm notices him. He flinches back at its initial growl, which is, uh… worrying.
No Hunter in training this far into their career should be intimidated by a common Beowolf.
"Alright…" Roman talks to himself under his breath. "Can't be much different than a street fight. Dodge and weave… dodge and weave…"
What?
The Grimm charges him, and Roman's stance, already far too shallow, becomes more so. As the beast lumbers after him, Roman stands his ground.
Which works for someone like Yang, or Nora, or Jaune, who each have weapons or styles that capitalize on the weight of the enemy, and then use it against them.
Two dinky hunting knives are not the weapons for such a strategy.
The Grimm is right on top of him, Roman swears out under his breath in what sounds like panic, and then dodges…
In.
Ruby's seen just about enough.
Roman tries to block the Grimm's strike on his left knife, but it's clear that the hit is about three times as hard as he'd been expecting. It sends him hurtling to the right, and evidently shakes him rather heavily, for he doesn't at all react as the creature rears up, and threatens to crush down on him with its right arm.
His eyes widen, he tenses up, fearing the worst.
The Grimm is bisected in the next instant, its body flying into the air as Crescent Rose already begins to transform back into its carry-form.
Roman looks almost flabbergasted.
The top half of the Grimm hits the ground a few seconds later, and then begins to dissolve into the earth.
Ruby is focused on other matters.
Namely…
"You've…" She looks back at Roman, her eyes hard. "Never actually fought a Grimm before, have you?"
Roman swallows in that moment, almost taking a defensive stance against Ruby, like he thinks she might lunge at him after such a realization. She notices that the hunting knife he'd been planning on using in his left hand, the one that he'd blocked with, has been broken, the entire top half missing.
The difference between a tool meant to hunt game, and a tool meant to hunt monsters.
"I…" Roman looks away. "I didn't… I've… it's…"
Ruby just waits, and although she feels a lot like Yang, placing her hands on her hips and tilting her head to one side, almost like she's disciplining a young child, she really does need to figure out how a boy who's never fought a single Grimm before has somehow made it into Beacon's initiation.
…Actually, this is feeling rather familiar, now that she thinks about it.
"Did you…" She pauses, thinking about the cameras that might be hanging up around them. She decides to curtail that line of questioning, if only for a bit. "Did you get hurt back there?"
"Huh?" Roman looks down at his body, which is, thankfully, entirely unharmed. "No, uh… my aura protected me."
Well, that's good. At least he's more experienced than Jaune had been when he'd gotten here.
It sort of raises the question in Ruby's head of how Roman had managed to survive initiation the first time he'd arrived without Ruby. Perhaps he'd met someone else to carry him through initiation, and then improved after that? It's certainly possible.
Either way, they do have to get moving. Initiation is on a soft time limit, that being when the relics in the clearing they've been set up within have all been exhausted. Once that happens, the rest of the students still making their way through the Emerald Forest will be…
Well, to borrow a phrase Yang uses sometimes, 'shit out of luck'.
So, despite the questions lurking about the back of Ruby's mind, she shelves them, and pushes them onwards.
/
Ruby doesn't think they've been especially fast. If anything, she's pretty sure they've been rather terribly slow.
And yet, as she and Roman emerge from out of the woods, and see the same ruins that Ruby and her future teammates had seen during their stint at Beacon, none of the other relics have yet been claimed.
Huh.
"Woah…" Roman sounds awed. "We were really the first ones here?"
"It seems like it." Ruby mutters a bit awkwardly under her breath. "Although I'm not entirely sure how. We didn't make great time or anything."
Roman looks over at her quizzically. "How would you know? I thought we were pretty fast."
Ruby knows, of course, because she's been through this all before. That is, as one might imagine, not the best excuse, however, and so she laughs awkwardly under her breath, and says, "Just a hunch, I guess?"
Roman buys it. That, or he's too caught up in his own obvious lies to be calling Ruby out on any of hers.
"Well, let's grab some relics, and we'll head back towards the cliffs." Ruby tells him, and Roman nods.
Honestly, things are pretty quiet in that moment.
Ruby really should take that as a sign that something is about to explode.
That something, in this case, is a tree on the very edge of the clearing, and then, just after, it's an Ursa Major, falling backwards out onto the grass, landing hard on the ground, and going deathly still.
Roman seems shocked, but Ruby's just watching. She's… not necessarily cautious, because she doesn't really have anything to fear here, but…
Well, she's curious, more than anything.
The figure that emerges from out of the trees is not quite the demolitionist that Ruby had expected.
She'd assumed that whatever it had been that had caused such an explosion, it would have had to hit hard. Either a massive weapon, or a particularly powerful Hunter. Someone with bulging muscles, or someone with a weapon that could very much compensate for a lack of bulging muscles.
And yet, the girl who steps out of the tree line then is scrawny. Not as much as Roman is, in all fairness, but about as scrawny as Ruby. She's got dark skin, chestnut hair, and…
And she's the girl that Ruby had bumped into back in the locker rooms, now that she thinks about it.
Said girl sees Ruby, and her eyes go about as wide as saucers. She holds her weapon up towards her – some kind of staff – as if thinking her a threat.
"W-Woah! Easy!" Roman shouts out, waving his hands above his head. "Just students, like you!"
The girl looks to Roman, then back at Ruby, and her brow furrows. Ruby hasn't really moved. It's funny, but somewhere around the fiftieth or so time that she'd had a weapon pointed at her, it had stopped bothering her.
She's fast enough to avoid just about anything, and tough enough to take a hit if needs must.
Even if she's really quite curious to know why this girl seems…
Wary about her.
"Pardon me," The girl states as she steps towards them, curtsying in a rather old-fashioned way. "I mistook the two of you for… well, that doesn't matter." She clears her throat. "I do not believe we have met."
"Oh, I'm Ruby." She holds out her hand, trying her best to get rid of whatever bad impression she must've given the girl after they'd bumped into one another. She'd seemed friendly before, after all.
"I thought your name was Yang?" Roman scowls.
Ruby's face blanches, and the girl in front of her doesn't miss that.
"Oh, uh… yeah." Ruby chuckles. "It's uh… Yang's my middle name. I used to go by it as a nickname, y'know?"
"Oh, okay." Roman accepts that easily enough. "So should I call you Ruby, or?"
"Either's fine." Ruby says with a smile, trying not to be bothered by the massive mistake she's just made, giving away her real first name. It probably won't matter, but…
But she can see the way the girl in front of her grows even more suspicious of her, now that she knows she gave her partner a fake name. Even if Roman had fallen for the middle name excuse, this new arrival certainly hasn't.
"So, uh…" Ruby rather desperately wants to pretend this hasn't happened. "What's your name?"
She thinks about that a moment, Ruby can tell. She might be ruminating on handing out a fake name of her own, which is weird, like, really weird, but then, so is travelling back in time, and Ruby's got that on lock, so who is she to judge, really?
"Amber." She says after a moment's more deliberation.
"My name is Amber."
/
"Are you sure about this, Headmaster?"
Ozpin smiles as Glynda glowers over at him, her referring to him as 'headmaster' more than enough for him to get the picture that she's quite cross with him.
"I am." Ozpin states. "If she truly is one of Salem's, then I don't believe she'll be able to resist such tempting bait."
"Amber is a child, Ozpin." Glynda practically snarls. "Maiden or no, she is not some… tool."
"I am well aware, Glynda. Which is why she will be monitored around the clock. We shall not give Ms. 'Rosenberg' a chance to try anything at all."
Glynda nods her head, even as she sighs, and massages the bridge of her nose.
"You said that Summer Rose had no siblings. No family."
"I did."
"And yet, she…"
"Yes…" Ozpin hesitates. "I know."
"What do you believe we should do?"
"That is a rather terribly good question, Glynda, and one I would be remiss to leave unanswered." Ozpin thinks, his mind moving at a million miles a minute. He is so very unused to adapting in this day and age, his plans always made decades, sometimes centuries in advance. "But perhaps we are not the ones who should answer such a question."
Glynda looks up at him, her eyes widening.
"You mean…"
Ozpin nods, already preparing to make the call the moment initiation wraps.
"…Perhaps hers is the exact opinion we need."
/
"You four will form Team SNBD, also known as Team Songbird."
There's a collection of polite applause at that, and Ruby joins in, not at all one to not give credit where it is due.
After all, these are those people who'd made it past initiation. Those people who will be joining Beacon Academy's first year class. Those who will have the chance to become Huntsman and Huntresses.
Ruby's among them, once again.
So is Roman Torchwick, standing just beside her, with a beaming smile the likes of which seems almost alien on his face.
He looks… joyful. Well and truly.
Before she can think too hard about that, though, she hears as Headmaster Ozpin begins to announce the next team.
"Now, as the number of students that successfully managed to finish initiation this year ended up being an odd number, the final team will consist of only three members."
That's… what?
Ruby hasn't heard of a three-member Hunter team. At least not one that had been that size initially. Of course, deaths happened on the battlefield, and many Huntsman teams decided to tough it out without adding a new fourth member if they suffered as such. But she hadn't heard of one that had begun as a unit of three.
What's more, she knows for a fact that there are an even number of Relics, given that Nora had counted them during their initiation.
There had been 32. Enough for eight teams of 4.
…Odd. Too odd.
Ruby smells trouble already.
Somehow, she has a feeling it's going to involve her.
"Ruby Rosenberg, Roman Torchwick, and Amber Equinox. Please make your way up onto the stage."
Roman almost bowls her over with how excited he is, which has a couple of people in the crowd around them laughing. If she'd been fifteen, like she'd been when she'd first arrived at Beacon, she probably would've pulled her hood up around her face, and then dashed up on stage to avoid any further embarrassment.
As things are, she shakes her head, smiles, and follows along behind Roman.
Amber takes the staircase on the other side of the room to make her way up, and meets them centerstage.
Roman stands in the middle, with Amber and Ruby on either side.
"You three will form Team RAR, or Team Rarity."
Feels like a bit of a stretch, but I guess he didn't have a ton to work with. Ruby mentally remarks.
"Led by…"
And then, Ozpin looks right at her.
"Ms. Ruby Rosenberg."
And it is only then, in that moment, that Ruby realizes it.
She'd not said her name at any point other than to Amber, and Roman.
Which means…
Somehow, Ozpin had been listening.
"Congratulations, Ms. Rosenberg."
Ruby feels it in her chest, that look in Ozpin's eyes.
He knows. Not all of it, obviously, but she had not gone nearly as undetected as she'd thought. She'd simply been allowed in, an object of curiosity invited into Ozpin's game of chess, on the off chance she knows the game.
And now…
Now, she has no choice but to play.
End Chapter 6
Alright, that's chapter 6!
We've sort of finished the prologue for Ruby? But also not really? It's complicated. Suffice it to say that she's not only responsible for Roman, but Amber as well! We'll get some interesting drama with Team Rarity, that's for sure.
Next chapter, Jaune and Blake, and then perhaps someone we haven't heard from yet? Who knows. I know. Of course. I'm writing the story.
You could know too, right now! If you want to support me, and get access to the next FOUR chapters of this story right now, far sooner than they'll release on FF or AO3, then consider checking out my Patron! There's an e in there after the r and before the o. I assume you know what I'm talking about, but FF and AO3 don't like me typing that. It's just website dot com /Deferonz!
Want to support me without signing up for a monthly payment? Check out my Kofi! just website dot com /Deferonz
Quick blurb about commissions: I am no longer taking longer commissions! I have three stories currently being written, one of which will be debuting... possibly tonight? We'll see. If it is, you'll know. Given it will be up a few hours from now.
I am still taking oneshot commissions, if you'd like to request that, and of course I'm open for art commissions!
Now, for the bad news: I'm going on vacation! So, actually, it's good news for me, just bad news for you since I'm not going to be writing this week. I may upload a chapter on Saturday when I get back anyways, but don't count on it, basically.
Alright, that's all! Hope you guys have a great week, I'll see you in (=2) weeks!