36

The halls of Beacon were strangely empty as Ruby made her way back to her dorm. It seemed like many of the students had already chosen and been sent out on their missions. That was probably a good thing because she would most likely garner some attention with the bandages that still swaddled her neck. True to her word, the doctor had removed the stitches after Jaune had come by, and hadn't that been a surprise.

The older Jaune had come by, quiet and contrite as she waved at him. Ruby had noticed something was wrong but she really didn't know what to do about it. It was her first time truly meeting him and the tired look in his eyes had her worried. When she had tried to type him a message he had simply glanced at it and given her a small smile before touching his fingers to her neck. Ruby had heard that he'd had a semblance and as the warm, tingling sensation flowed into her she realised what exactly it was. That and Jaune filled the silence by talking about it.

His semblance, which he called Amp, let him simply amplify others' aura and semblances. It could make her faster, Yang stronger, he could even help Ren mask entire groups of people from the Grimm, not to mention healing and saving lives. It had been a good distraction, his rambling as Doctor Violet removed the stitches.

It felt like it had been forever since she had been in her own dorm or slept in her own bed. The door lock clicked as she presented her scroll and she swung the door open. Ruby wasn't sure what she was expecting when she swung the door open. Perhaps Yang would have tackled her to the ground in exuberance or maybe she would come back to mysteriously source confetti and well wishes. What she instead found was Blake perched in the middle of the room, her scroll out and looking like she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

She blinked her silver eyes and looked to the side at where her teammate was pointing her scroll. At first it didn't appear that Yang or Weiss was in the room, which would have been disappointing but upon closer inspection it appeared that her partner was in her bed. Moving a few steps inside her eyes widened at what she saw. It wasn't just Weiss in the bed but Yang too, her sister cuddled up to the heiress and snoozing peacefully. They both were, in fact. Yang looked exhausted, even in her sleep, as Weiss spooned her from behind.

Ruby's cheeks turned a violent shade of red, "Yang?!" She shouted, her voice incredibly hoarse and breaking painfully. She winced and brought her fingers up to the bandage, hoping that hadn't opened it up. Presumably her aura should prevent the wound from reopening without considerable strain.

Yang's eyes snapped open, "Ruby!" She shouted and jumped up, attempting to leap out of Weiss' bed but not remembering that there was a bunk above. Her forehead impacted the bottom of Ruby's bunk. Stumbling with a pained cry she fell onto the floor, or what would have been the floor if Blake hadn't been standing in the middle of the room. She dragged her partner down with Blake yelping in surprise.

There was a few moments of cursing and hissing as Yang extricated herself, her face flushing, "Ruby! You're back!" She rushes forward, enveloping her in a big hug.

"Love you too, Yang." Ruby whispered, her heart squeezing as tightly as her sister squeezed her.

"You can talk?! Should you be talking?" Yang pulled back but didn't let go, looking her up and down, "Does it hurt?"

"Yes, I can talk." She answered with a quiet voice, "It's fine if I don't do it too much and it only feels weird if I talk like this. Kinda scratchy and hurty if I talk loud, though."

Her sister sighed in relief, leaning her forehead against hers, "Thank goodness. I was super worried about you Ruby."

"More importantly-"

"More?!"

"-what is with that!?" Yang stagewhispered, pointing to Weiss' bunk where the girl coughed and looked away with a blush.

"Uh…." Yang trailed off, "I can explain." Ruby raised an eyebrow, "So at the dance… well… Weiss and I kind of…"

"I am courting your sister." Weiss finally got fed up with Yang's hemming and hawing, her expression softening as she came up to take Ruby's hands in her own, "I apologise for not telling you sooner but we had a bit more to worry about than us dating."

Dating.

Ruby blue screened for a moment, her mind needing to reboot before she could process what she heard, what she had seen, "You… dating?"

"Yes." Weiss bit her lip, looking worried, "Is that okay?"

Was that okay?

Ruby looked from her sister to Weiss and back again, both of them holding nervous but hopeful looks. She wasn't sure how to feel about it. On the one hand it wasn't the first time Yang had dated someone, there had been a couple boys back in signal and one girl. Those hadn't lasted long, however. Yang had never told her why those relationships had failed, though she could make a guess as to some of them. There had been a lot of rumors at Signal of superficial boys attempting to date her sister and it wasn't hard to imagine that if Yang wasn't with them now, they weren't very genuine.

Which left Weiss, her partner and friend. Ruby trusted her with her life despite how rocky things had started off between them. In the short few months since they had met, they had gone from enemies to best friends, though Weiss would probably never admit it. If she could trust her with her life, why not her sister?

Instead of answering vocally, Ruby stepped forward to grab Weiss and pull her partner into a hug. The girl stiffened for a moment before relaxing into her grip, her arms coming up to return the embrace.

"Told you~" Yang teased as she joined the hug before looking back at her own partner, "C'mon Kitty-cat. Join us!"

"Uh…" Blake backed away, "I'm fine, really. This has nothing-!"

She yelped as Yang's hand snapped out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the team hug. Despite her grumbling, Blake didn't pull back, though maybe she didn't because it was too much effort to resist. Ruby beamed at her when their eyes met, her ears flicking as she looked away with a dusting of pink. Blake cared, she just didn't like to show it.

"So…. it's okay?" Weiss asked.

Yang and Ruby rolled their eyes at the same time and she pulled away from the group hug, "Of course it's okay Weiss." Ruby answered before putting on the fiercest scowl she could muster, "If you hurt Yang, you'll have to answer to me."

Her sister snorted and Weiss broke a small smile, "I'd be more worried about what Yang would do to me, in that case."

"I'll get Carmine to help." That wiped the smile off her face, the pale girl going even more so. Ruby couldn't help it and broke out into giggles. The news had been unexpected but not unwelcome.

"Have you had dinner yet, Rubes?" Yang asked, cutting in to save her new girlfriend.

"Not yet."

"Good let's go get some grub. We fell asleep waiting for you."

"Yeah, I'll be along in a second, just let me get changed real quick." Though her team had brought her some clothes to wear while she recovered, she felt the need to slip into something cleaner.

"Alright. We'll save you a seat."

Weiss and Yang filed out, the door clicking softly behind them and leaving Blake alone with her. Ruby quickly shucked off her clothes, grabbing a fresh uniform from her dresses.

"How are you feeling?"

The question from Blake made her pause and look over, her teammate looking on her with naked concern, "I'm feeling okay. Honest."

"That was quite the noise you made, is your throat okay?"

Ruby stood, her blouse halfway on as she started buttoning it, "I think so."

"Do you want me to check?"

Her hands stopped two buttons short and she nodded. She found the point where the bandage ended and started peeling it off. It took a moment but soon her fresh wound was exposed to the ait and she didn't miss the way Blake's eyes widened. She winced and schooled her expression and Ruby's fingers flew to her neck, feeling the raw and mottle flesh there. The doctor hadn't let her see the wound when she had removed the stitches so she had no idea how it looked.

Running to the bathroom, she flicked on the light and stared in the mirror, gazing in abject horror at the grizzly and angry red line that stretched across her neck. Blake followed her a moment later, hesitantly putting a hand on her shoulder. Her shaking hand reached up to feel the wound, her fingers flinching when touching the puckered flesh. For a moment she felt the hot, sharp pain again.

"It's going to fade with time." Blake didn't try to sugar coat it, or downplay it and she appreciated that because she wouldn't have appreciated that, "You've seen Weiss' scar. It'll fade."

The reassurance and reminder calmed her down. At least now she could see that it wasn't bleeding. Blake was right, Weiss had a scar too, one that was just over her eye and it was something that couldn't be covered. Maybe it looked bad, but it wouldn't always. That simple thought was enough to let her draw in a deep breath and tear her eyes away from it.

"Help me wrap it back up?" Blake agreed and they got a fresh roll of gauze, looping it around a few times before securing it with a spot of medical tape. She finished buttoning her blouse, the collar blessedly covering the bandage for the most part. It was the main reason she had wanted to change in the first place. Ruby wasn't interested in being a point of interest.

Donning her hood around her shoulders she squared her shoulders and forced her chin up, taking comfort in the familiar cloak as it enveloped her.

-SY-

The crisp morning air brushed over his skin as he closed his eyes and felt the air. It was a sunny day, annoyingly so. Qrow would have much preferred it to be overcast, though the bright light of day certainly helped their purpose. He ignored the sound of clicks and rustling behind him to survey the area before him where he was perched on the rooftop edge of a desiccated building. It was one of the tallest that still remained, the corpse of a skyscraper lay where it fell several blocks away, rubble covering several city blocks. Buildings were burned out husks where fires had once raged or looked like they had been destroyed by some unimaginably huge hand.

Qrow had seen destroyed villages before, the remains of Grimm attacks were nothing new to him. But this? This wasn't something that existed elsewhere on Remnant. Mountain Glenn was an anomaly, a large city that fell to the Grimm a few decades ago. He remembered it, he had been in Beacon when it happened. However as a young student he had been kept from the worst of it, his team tasked with helping patrol Vale's walls so that the Huntsmen teams could move in to help evacuate civilians. He'd never actually seen it, never had a reason to visit the place.

Ghost villages were creepy but somewhat common, they told a story of what had happened there. Almost always Grimm, but sometimes bandits or natural disasters but always followed by Grimm. His pale red eyes swept across the ruined and rusted landscape, looking down without much concern for the height. There were remains, nothing like skeletons laying in the streets, those had long since decomposed. Instead there were shreds of cloth, destroyed cars, and in one street the remains of a stroller on the sidewalk. Signs pointed down streets that had lost their name to the elements or had been uprooted, trees that survived cracked through the pavement with their roots, and even the occasional critter scurried from shadow to shadow.

It painted a painful picture of what had happened there, his experience telling him of how many panicked innocents must have been torn into by Beowolves, trampled by Goliaths, or ripped asunder by Ursa. It made him feel sick and cold just being there.

Qrow finally looked away, back towards his companion who was busy fiddling with what looked like some kind of high tech tree. It looked like Winter had almost finished with the assembly and while he would have helped, he didn't trust his semblance anywhere near the sensitive equipment.

"How's it going over there?"

"The portable relay is almost online." Winter reported, not even looking up at him, "I just need to calibrate it."

She started messing with the panel on it as it whirred to life, the parabolic dish rotating around as she did so. Winter stood and stepped back, tapping on her earpiece a few times. The machine kept adjusting itself.

Qrow whistled, "Fancy bit of tech, that. Is it new?"

"It's a prototype the General authorized for our mission. Mountain Glenn could pose an issue with communication, this should let us reach the fleet even from underground."

"Neat."

"Atlas Actual, this is Specialist Schnee. Can you read me?" It looked like she had gotten the signal up, that was good. He couldn't hear what was said on the comm device in her ear but she spent a few moments confirming the quality and stability of the signal before she turned back to him, "Alright Qrow. You're in the lead on this operation. How are we approaching this?"

"Right well we know the White Fang are excavating the tunnels." Qrow pulled out his own scroll and projected an old map of the city into the air, "Now we can't rely on how Carmine found them so we need to look for the entrances to the underground. From what schematics we have, there were five entrances to the subterranean city."

"Were?"

"Yep. We don't know which ones have been sealed or blocked off, so we're going to have to search each one ourselves. Either that or look around for the White Fang and follow them."

"We're bound to find them with the first method and that carries less risk for discovery."

"Bingo, Ice Queen." Qrow stepped up the the edge, "I'll take the North side if you take the South."

"I am not sure it is wise to-"

He didn't hear the rest as her fell backwards with a smirk at the expression of irritation on her face as he disappeared over the edge, the wind whistling past his ears. Before he could hit the ground, he transformed, gliding on the air on his black wings, his visions suddenly shifting to a literal bird's eye view.

Slowly he looped to the North, noting the flash of white as Winter followed suit, leaping down on her glyphs. She would be fine, the portable relay would let them have crystal clear signal no matter where they were in the city. He wanted to get this done and get back to Beacon, get back to Ruby.

Maybe he could even badger Ozpin to let him go with them to Menagerie. Carmine would need more than one huntsman for backup if things went sideways with the Primordial they were meant to track down.

As he alighted near a subway entrance, transforming back into his normal self, he stared down into the dark and unlit space.

It was time to get to work.