Author's Foreword: Okay, apparently part two of the chapter is not showing up for some people. If there's no 'next' button on this page, just manually change the '32' in the URL to 33. Fault 2 should also be visible from Dreams, in the drop-down list.
I don't even with this site.
Chapter XXVIII: Fault, part 1
A growing drone of powerful engines cut through the tranquility of the no man's land, announcing the passage of a small convoy. Bound for one of Vale's satellite towns, the column braved the narrow forest roads with all the haste it could afford, kicking up clouds of dust in its wake. Comprised of three trucks and four pickups, it carried some much needed aid and rations, its mission made all the more crucial by the latest supply run never reaching its destination. The lingering mystery of that missing convoy made many truckers understandably on the edge — even despite the presence of two Huntresses in their midst, never mind the armed militia.
Ruby was sitting on the stake bed of the first truck, surrounded by a plethora of different barrels and crates, her hood put up to protect her from the wind. She found herself a decently comfy spot, sitting cross-legged atop a crate pushed right against the driver cabin. 'Comfy' was relative here, as a pesky plank would hurt her butt and make her right leg fall asleep unless she sat just right. Bearable would probably be the more appropriate word, but she wasn't exactly spoiled for choice with her seating arrangements.
The drive began to wear her focus thin, sanding it away with each passing hour. She was alert and ready to act, but she would take a glance at her Scroll every once in a while, almost on reflex. A part of her — a part she was actively trying to suppress that day — was hoping she would hear from Weiss. A text, a meme, a funny cat video — anything. The other, more logical side knew that it would go against the very point of this whole excursion.
Odds were, Weiss saw it that way, as well.
They were maybe two-thirds of the way to their destination when Blake caught her in the act, and seemed to have divined Ruby's silent dilemma.
"So, how did Weiss react to the news?"
Ruby lifted her eyes to meet Blake's. "About as well as I could've hoped, I guess…" she said, then called forth a smirk. "I told you I could handle her."
"I concur," Blake replied with a small chuckle. "What convinced her?"
The answer teetered on the tip of Ruby's tongue for a couple of seconds. "I simply told her why I needed this," she finally said, her gaze getting lost amidst the surrounding trees.
Blake found the answer wanting. That said, any and all attempts at remedying that were forcefully shelved for later when the hiss of engaging brakes alerted both Huntresses to some developments further down the road. For whatever reason, the column was slowing down.
Ruby spun on her spot and knelt atop her crate, poking her head over the cab. Some forty, fifty yards ahead, a person was lying smack-dab in the middle of the road. They seemed to be calling for help, as if in distress, but… something about the scene just didn't seem right.
"Ruby…" Blake let out, her tone a warning.
Not needing her to say anything more, Ruby yanked the sliding glass window and put her head inside the driver's cab, startling both its occupants. The looks she'd been given demanded answers, but all she had for them were orders.
"It's an ambush! Floor it!"
The driver — a redhead lady in her late twenties — balked. "I— what? But—"
"Trust me — drive!"
The woman hesitated, looking at Ruby like she'd lost her marbles to ask them to run someone over. Before any more words could be spoken, the lady's co-driver kicked her foot off the brake and stomped on the gas pedal. Some incoherent screaming ensued, but it didn't last long — as soon as the truck's engine revved up, the 'wounded' guy up the road jumped to his feet and bolted up an embankment, screaming something.
Her instincts kicking in, Ruby grabbed the co-driver by the neck and pushed. "Down!" Within the next beat of her heart, first bullets spiderwebbed the shotgun window.
Being under fire seemed to have gotten Ruby's point across better than any argument ever could. Raising no more objections, the driver lady stomped on the gas, keeping her head low and steering wheel straight; in the meanwhile, her partner was shouting warnings into the CB radio.
Ruby withdrew from the cab and looked at Blake, who was returning fire at the attackers hiding among the trees. "Sally!"
Blake replied with a curt nod, a fresh mag of Dust-infused ammo flying into her gloved hand. After a quick reload, her Aura flared and five of her clones sprung into existence, immediately leaping off the truck bed and into the woods on both sides; moments later, multiple lightning explosions went off, punctuated by screams of pain and fear.
Some guy was flushed out from his hidey hole, only to crumple to the ground in a flash of his Aura when Ruby put a round in his shin. She and Blake kept at it, bombarding enemy positions with Dust attacks and then nailing down any rats that scurried out. With no room to dodge or swing her scythe, a couple of lucky rounds managed to graze her, but it barely put a dent in her Aura supply; in the meantime, the convoy continued to plow on ahead, picking up speed.
The bandits had also realized that fact. Fiery sparks rained in abundance as more and more bullets peppered the cars themselves, but it did little to slow the column down. While not exactly tanks, each vehicle was designed with braving the frontier in mind — armored engine blocks, solid tires and bullet-resistant glass enabled them to take quite some punishment before breaking down.
"Stop that truck! Now!" they heard someone yell.
Ahead, a bunch of fallen leaves was kicked up from the ground, revealing twin cords of thick rope running across the road, taut as they both tugged at some pine tree.
A pine tree that was beginning to tilt.
Ruby sprung to action immediately, unfurling her scythe and cresting the truck's roof, lack of cover be damned. Their ride might've been equipped with a wedge plow, but it was for field stones or branches, not whole-ass trees.
"Oh no you don't!"
The truck groaned beneath her as she launched herself off its roof and blasted forward as a gale-force wind. Trees swayed and creaked where she went, while a storm of red and gold followed in her wake, leaves swept off the ground or ripped clean off their branches. Cries of grown men and women came from below her as she blitzed past, but she didn't care — she had but one goal in her sights, and would reach it on time.
She crashed into the toppling tree boots-first, slamming it with enough force that the feedback rocked her Aura-reinforced spine. The pine was blown off its original course, falling onto some roadside bushes amidst a cascade of bark, pine cones and splinters; before the tree could even hit the ground, Ruby was already upon the nearest hostile.
She didn't even register their face. Having been thrown to the ground by Ruby's tailwind, they were in a desperate scramble to aim their bolt-action rifle by the time she got to them. With an upward spin, she slammed the counterweight of Crescent Rose into the underside of their forearm.
A crack of breaking bone, followed by a crack of a gunshot flying wildly off-target.
Another thug came at her from behind a tree. She parried the swing of their mace before throwing them to the ground with a heel put to the temple.
Drawn to the movement in her periphery, her gaze snapped to another enemy lying prone on the forest bed. Their eyes locked briefly, and Ruby simply stared them down, right down the barrel of an automatic pointed her way.
More gunfire tore through the woods. A long, uninterrupted burst, cut short only by the dead man's click. With the passing of smoke, clarity washed over the thug — and with clarity came the terror.
Not a single round reached its target.
Honestly, it wasn't like Ruby had needed to do all that much. Only the first few rounds had been actually aimed; the rest had gone where they wanted. Pitiful, really.
She narrowed her eyes, leading the bandit to drop his weapon and start skittering backwards across the leaf litter. She felt she had a decent understanding of what they were up against. Mere rabble, equipped with nothing but personal defense weapons or hunting rifles, with no trigger discipline and barely any Aura control to speak of. Opportunistic vultures, hoping to enrich themselves while the Kingdoms had their hands full with rebuilding.
Maybe she had lacked the full picture; maybe they had been driven out of their homes by the Grimm, or fallen on hard times… but even if that were the case, she would still have had little pity to offer them. She could barely tolerate Raven, and that was after she had straightened out; Raven, to whom she owed Weiss' survival.
But those rats? She had no interest in hearing their sob story.
"Ruby! Let's go!" she heard Blake call. On the road behind her, the convoy was about to move past her position.
Leaving the guy in front of her with a final look of disapproval, Ruby scattered on the wind.
Weiss was gliding to and fro about the room. Rows upon rows of clothes and hunting gear laid spread out on her bed, dresser and desk, waiting for appraisal under her scrutinizing eye. Items that fit her criteria she'd grab and set aside, to later stuff into her backpack — or pawn off to Yang.
Throughout her packing, she was on a voice call with Winter; that said, she didn't contribute much to the conversation, spare for a handful of questions intended to keep it going. It was the inverse of their usual dynamic, but her sister seemed content to humor her — for a time, anyways.
"Weiss?" Winter called at some point.
"Yes?"
"Is something wrong?" In retrospect, it had been but a matter of time before Winter had grown alarmed by that role reversal.
The question got Weiss to pause in the middle of folding her spare outfit, if only for a heartbeat.
"Not really. What brought this on?"
"You seem… distracted."
"I'm just packing. Yang and I are going on a hunt tomorrow morning." While truthful, Weiss' answer rung in her own ears as evasive.
The two-second silence marked Winter's surprise. "Not you and Ruby?" she asked, and Weiss thought that she'd caught a hint of concern in her sister's voice.
"Not this time. She's out hunting with Blake," Weiss said flatly, actively forcing herself not to stop her work.
"That's not your usual MO, is it," Winter remarked. There was a small pause, and when she spoke again, she did so with a degree of uncertainty, as though she was stepping outside her comfort zone. "Did something happen between you two?"
Weiss had to hold back a sigh. Winter wasn't that far off, but Weiss was none too keen on rehashing the drama from their latest hunt. She considered her answer for a second or two, slicking her tongue back and forth across her teeth.
"Yes, but I've been told it's irrelevant to the situation," she finally spoke, her gaze downcast. After a moment of hesitation, she further added, "You could say that Ruby is trying to prove a point."
"To you?"
Weiss just shook her head at first — to no one in particular, knowing full-well that Winter couldn't see her. Pressing her fingers to the smooth, sturdy material of her jacket, she replied with but two words. "To herself."
Ruby had approached her a while ago, two days after their return to Vale. She'd come downstairs while Weiss had been reading a book in the living room, all by her lonesome. Weiss certainly hadn't minded the quiet, and — in truth — had been fully expecting Ruby to simply pass her by. Instead of moving on, however, Ruby had just lingered awkwardly next to the armchair, looking a little antsy.
"Weiss?" Ruby had called, getting her to look up from the page. "I'd like to go hunting next week…"
Weiss had been about to agree on a reflex, but Ruby's next words had shoved her response back down her throat.
"With Blake."
A confused frown upon her brow, Weiss had put away her book and shifted her position so as to better look at Ruby. The girl had been clearly stressing over that exchange, to the point of wringing her hands. She had been also struggling to keep eye contact, but it hadn't been that unusual — what had been, however, was how intensely Ruby had been tryingto maintain it.
"Is it about our argument? I don't mind going with you, you know?" Weiss had probed. She had meant it — things between them were a little awkward still, but Ruby remained her partner and best friend.
Weiss' reassurance had gotten Ruby to smile, but it had been clearly strained. "No, that's not it," she had said with a small shake of her head. Before Weiss' train of thought could've taken off with that piece of information, Ruby had quickly raised her hands, as though to placate her. "It's— it's not a matter of trust, I promise. Just… hear me out, please."
Weiss remembered feeling like a knot the size of a ball of yarn had coiled in her stomach. "…I'm listening."
Ruby had drawn a deep breath and settled down gingerly on the very edge of the armchair. For a little while, she had remained quiet — uncertain, or at a loss for words perhaps. She'd licked her lip as seconds ticked by; finally, her posture changed, as if she'd arrived at some resolution, or had found her resolve.
And she'd smiled.
"I do trust you, Weiss. With my life — and soul, apparently."
It had taken Weiss aback, actually, just how disarming and genuine that smile had appeared. Though relatively faint and subdued by the mood of the situation, nothing about it had stood out as fake or forced; conflicted and a little sheepish, perhaps, but that hadn't made it any less convincing.
"When you're with me, I feel like we can defy the odds. Like I can stop second-guessing my every decision, 'cause you're there to reel me in. Like every single problem ahead has a solution, like— like everything's gonna turn out okay. With you around, I'm simply… more."
A spark of warmth had been kindled within Weiss' chest; alas, it had been paired with the stubborn ache of a 'but' that had laid in wait — ache that lingered with Weiss still.
"Then why not take me along?" she had found herself asking.
The light of Ruby's smile had dimmed, and her gaze lowered. She'd had an answer alright, but it had still taken her a while to put it to words.
"To see if I'm still 'me' without you."
The column kept on driving, but sooner or later they had to stop and tend to the wounded. They did so after putting about five miles between them and the ambush site; a bit close for comfort, perhaps, but it was preferable over someone fainting from blood loss and crashing their vehicle.
Thankfully, there were no fatalities in their midst, though a handful of people had gotten shot, and many more been wounded by flying glass shards. Those driving at the head of the convoy were in the worst shape, having drawn most of the enemy fire. Miss driver had two bullets put in her arm and shoulder; one had gone clean through and got stuck in her seat, but the other had to be dug out from the wound. Ruby took it onto herself to patch the woman up, while Blake worked on the other trucker. The guy was quite bloodied up, though in a better shape than his partner — basically all of his injuries were superficial, including the gunshot that grazed his back; a lot of glass shards had to be plucked from his arms and face, though.
Despite his many lacerations, he seemed to be looking at the brighter side of life.
"That was quite the display from both of you, back there. You Huntresses really are built different," he spoke, more band-aid and gauze than man.
His partner lifted her eyes at Ruby, who was just wrapping things up on her end.
"Are all your colleagues as scary as you?"
"To a degree, but Ruby here is uniquely terrifying," Blake laughed.
The terror in question shot her a dirty look. "Oh shush, you."
Blake had been only half joking. She firmly believed that Coco had had the right idea when she'd used Weiss and Ruby to make a point — there were power couples, and then there were shock-and-awe couples.
Blake and Yang were a power couple, Coco had said. 'Badass, competent, complimenting each other; hot stuff all around.' Then, there was the other group — 'not necessarily better, but far more likely to knock you on your ass with their presence alone'.
Yang was borderline unstoppable in combat; a veritable juggernaut, capable of powering through every obstacle in her way. Ruby, though? Ruby was closer to a natural disaster than a human. You don't fight natural disasters.
Take that ambush, for example: for how desperate they'd been to get the convoy to stop, the highwaymen ran for the hills as soon as Ruby tossed them like ragdolls around the forest — and it had not been a dignified retreat. She had snuffed out their fighting spirit without needing to lay a finger on them, nor even it being her objective.
Even though she seldom worked on her Semblance consciously, it didn't stop her from using it to an absolutely devastating effect. Mass, force and friction were her playthings. Just how terrifying could she become, were she to ever take it to its logical extreme? Could she create pressure blasts strong enough to turn gravel into shrapnel? Or accelerate someone's limb away from the rest of their body, tearing them apart on a molecular level? The notion was graphic, to say the least.
And Weiss? Weiss was a walking air strike, plain and simple — one with pinpoint accuracy and minimal call-in time.
It all wasn't to say that those two couldn't be beaten; they could, and they had been. That, however, did not take away their unique ability to sow seeds of futility in minds and hearts of those who went against them, much in the same way as Pyrrha had — with overwhelming shows of force.
Thus, shock-and-awe.
The man was in full agreement. "I'll say! The bastards probably pissed themselves when you kicked up that storm you did. I know I nearly did!"
Ruby gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry about the cabin…"
Ruby's takeoff had resulted in some collateral damage to the truck itself, denting in the roof and further cracking the already-damaged windshield; worse yet, it sprayed the cabin with even more shards of glass. Safe to assume, at least some of the cuts covering the truckers' arms and faces were her doing — something she was feeling very guilty of.
The guy simply waved her concerns away. "Don't sweat it. We probably woulda been taken for ransom or worse if not for you. A dinged cab and some scrapes are well worth it." He laughed, only to hiss and wince when the action aggravated his sore face. "Besides, I've got a cool story to tell my nephews."
The lady trucker studied Ruby for a spell. "How could you tell it was an ambush?"
Ruby shrugged. "You sorta get a feel for those things. That guy didn't really move like someone who's been banged up, and it didn't look like he dragged himself there — more like he just laid down. Add to it the fact that it was a decent spot for an ambush, and alarm bells start going off."
"I also heard voices deeper in the woods," Blake added.
The woman looked at Blake, surprised and impressed at the same time. "You Faunus can be pretty useful once in a while, eh?"
The lady was probably thinking she was being friendly, but Blake had to hold back a sigh at the casual racism at display. She was about to let it slide, but Ruby would have none of it.
"Most peoplehave something to offer, if you are smart enough to realize that and look past the surface," she said as she tied the last bandage, her smile saccharine sweet.
The lady narrowed her eyes as she watched Ruby take off her bloodied gloves. "The hell's that supposed to mean."
"Ey, don't be a prick. Little miss is right," the other trucker chided his coworker, then turned to Ruby and Blake. "Do you think that's what happened to the other convoy?"
The two Huntresses shared a look. The thought had crossed their minds, especially since that other convoy was the very reason they were there to begin with.
The rustle of a turning page disrupted the silence of the unusually still bedroom.
Seated on her bed, Weiss was about halfway through some book she'd nabbed from the living room. She didn't find it particularly enjoyable, but she was feeling rather desperate for something to do. She'd been trying to keep herself occupied ever since Ruby and Blake had set out that morning — which was precisely why she'd started packing so early to begin with. She'd finished hours ago; she'd also worked out, done the laundry, and even cleaned the room. With her list of distractions only continuing to grow shorter, she appreciated what she could get — an inoffensively uninteresting book included.
It was still bright across the window, although only just. The sunset brought soft pinks and purples out of the sparse few clouds scattered across the sky. Even though night was fast approaching, her bedtime was still deceptively far away; nevertheless, Weiss hoped that the book would tide her over till then.
She was in a strange frame of mind. Back when Ruby had first broken her the news of her hunt, she'd been a little upset — more than 'a little', to be honest, even though she hadn't voiced it at the time. Whilst not a betrayal, it had felt like she was being pushed away for some nebulous reason she hadn't quite understood. Thankfully, her hurt hadn't lasted long — only a few minutes, really, until she'd asked herself the same question Ruby had been plagued with.
'Could I still function without her?'
Paradoxically, it had been in her hesitation where she'd found clarity.
Yes, she believed she could, but the answer had been surprisingly difficult to reach, or even conceptualize. For Ruby, wrapped up in all her doubts and struggles, it must've been harder still.
"She feels like I'm a crutch," she had said to Winter some hours prior, after explaining the gist of the situation.
"She's afraid she's using you like one."
"Semantics."
"Is it?" Winter had challenged, making Weiss second-guess her initial dismissal. "You burn bright, Weiss. Lesser people would be intimidated by you, envy you, or try to use you. But from what little I know of her, I think she simply wishes to stand by your side as an equal. I respect her for that."
Winter's take had surprised Weiss a little, even though it shouldn't have, in retrospect. Being someone who had made it a point not to rely on others, it had been obvious she'd approve of Ruby's independence kick.
"She already does. That's the thing — she always has," Weiss had complained, sprawled all over her bed. "She's… going through some things. But it doesn't change how I see her."
"I'm glad that's how you feel," Winter had said, and Weiss got the impression of a smile from her voice. "But, as you said, it's something she has to prove to herself."
"I know…"
After a few seconds of silence, Winter had struck the nail on its head. "You want her to rely on you."
Weiss did — and felt guilty for it, afraid of becoming Ruby's chain.
She knew she was being awfully selfish about it all — making about herself what should be about Ruby — but she couldn't really help the way she felt. What she could do was to just grin and bear with it, and cross her fingers so that Ruby would find the answers she was looking for.
Her Scroll lit up to the tune of a cheerful chime. It couldn't possibly have been Ruby — her partner had made sure to set a custom ringtone for herself — but Weiss sprung to check it all the same.
It had been a message from Whitley — or a picture, rather. A photo of what was undoubtedly a Vacuan street, bustling with life and baking in sunlight. It was a fairly good shot, capturing well the ambiance of the place. Even though earthy tones dominated the frame, the occasional splash of color burned all the more vividly for it — the blue of the sky, the green of the palm trees, and a variety of intense, vibrant hues that accentuated the walls and canopies. A far cry from the usual, dusty impression most of Atlas — or Remnant, for that matter — had of the Kingdom.
Though, to be fair, there was a lot of dust.
'So, how do you feel about your visit to Vacuo?' Weiss fired her brother a message.
An amused smile lifted her face as she read Whitley's response. 'Like I am about to die. This weather is going to be the end of me.'
'It can't be that bad, can it?'
He replied with a quick selfie. Admittedly, he looked… rough. The sun was predictably much higher that far southwest, and Whitley clearly wasn't handling it well. His hair seemed to have lost a third of its usual volume, sticking to his scalp in wet streaks. The white shirt he was wearing was quite nearly transparent in places — and unbuttoned at the top, to boot. A pair of shades was hiding his eyes, but even with them it was comically easy to read his expression — lips set in a thin line, he was raising a cone of sad-looking ice cream to the camera, as if to make a point. Far behind him, the massive form of Shade Academy towered over the city.
'You tell me, sister.'
'I stand corrected,' she typed, a wide grin plastered on her face. Credit where it was due — her brother could probably pull off that somewhat-disheveled look, had he tried to.'How's the city? I've heard it was hit pretty hard during the siege'
'The situation looked rather bleak from the air, but the people seem to be moving on. Quarter of the population still lives in what you'd probably call a shanty town, but at the very least SDC helped them bring the necessities back online. Societal collapse averted, at least for now,' Whitley replied after maybe a minute.'It is rather strange, though, hearing people speak of the company with gratitude.'
'Is that a common sentiment in Vacuo?'
'Anecdotal, if not isolated,' he wrote back.'I imagine there are at least some who see SDC's support as a bribe from the devil. No one spat under my feet so far, though. Nor Mother's.'
Weiss chuckled as she typed her response. 'Did you really expect them to?'
'Father mentioned it happening to him and his aides on multiple occasions.'
'I mean, it _was_ Jacques'
'Touché,' Whitley conceded. He soon followed it with yet another message — one that left Weiss positively stupefied.'Two hundred billion Lien flowing Vacuans' way probably also helped our case.'
Weiss couldn't help but gape at the amount. The company had the funds for that, certainly… she just wasn't expecting that kind of funding to actually go through — not towards something that was effectively humanitarian aid.
'I imagine there must've been some pushback within the company to that kind of spending, no?'
'Some board members did not like it, indubitably, but none spoke out as far as I know. They are probably afraid of another purge,' he replied, only to add,'The PR department is thrilled, I've been told.'
Weiss snorted with laughter. 'I can imagine,' she replied.'Anyway, how are you enjoying the city? Have you done any sightseeing?'
'Not that much. I have been mostly familiarizing myself with the local cuisine and wandering around with Klein.' In another message, he added,'It is my impression that there isn't much in the way of exhibitions around the city.'
'I believe Vacuo has a pretty bustling live scene. Might be worth checking out,' Weiss wrote, feeling actually a smidgen jealous.
'Mother mentioned something in that vein. She is planning to take the evening off for that express purpose.'
The news of Willow Schnee set on watching some random performance in Vacuo irked Weiss to an unreasonable degree, but she shoved that feeling to the back of her mind. 'Do you plan on tagging along?'
'I haven't decided yet.'
Weiss left that message on read, not feeling like continuing the conversation. For a few minutes, she'd returned to her book, only to find herself occasionally re-reading the same passage twice or even thrice in a row.
A sigh left her chest when another ping of her Scroll took her out yet again.
It was Whitley again, and his text made Weiss crease her brow.
'Does it upset you?'
Weiss just stared at the empty reply field for a few moments, her fingers hovering an inch from the screen.
She finally typed a single character and pressed 'send'. '?'
'That Mother wants to see some local performers after skipping so many of your shows?'
'Does it matter? She can do whatever she wants.'
'Very well, forget I asked.'
Weiss felt a little guilty after reading Whitley's response. It didn't take a lot to imagine him hide his dejection behind an exaggerated eye roll.
Her eyelids fluttered as she drew in a deep breath. She'd promised herself she'd at least try to be better at that.
'It does,' she admitted.'How's the food?'
'Quite good. But the jury is still out whether it's worth the time I spent in the restroom.'
Their exchange continued, on and off, for some time, but Weiss was eventually left to read in peace. For a while, anyways — Yang invited herself in around eight in the evening, to check up on Weiss and discuss their plan of action for the next day. Once they were done, Yang all but dragged Weiss to the living room, to watch a movie together.
Weiss was allowed to retire for the night after an hour and change; having showered, she read one more chapter of the book before laying it off for the day. She checked her Scroll for one last time, then proceeded to bury herself up to her chin beneath the fluffy comforter. Finally, she opened her mouth on reflex — only to realize with disquiet that there was no one for her to speak to.
Feeling her heart sink a little, she rolled on her side and silently turned off the light.
After a long meeting with the town's mayor and a single night of rest, Ruby and Blake once again hit the road. Beyond receiving the essential intel on the lost convoy, they'd been offered the help of the local peacekeeping corps, including transportation. Instead, however, the two of them had tried their luck asking a favor of the caravan guards they'd traveled with the day prior — that was how they found themselves inside a lightly armored car, chatting with familiar faces.
At some point, Ruby was cut off in the middle of sentence by a light tap on the shoulder from Blake. Accepting the passed on binoculars, she followed the guidance of Blake's pointing finger and looked ahead; some three hundred yards in front of them, beyond a stretch of bushes hiding a slight curve of the road, she spotted the tall cab of a truck — not unlike the ones they'd been escorting less than a day ago.
"Uh-oh. Vehicles ahead, unmoving." She shot the driver a serious look. "Let's stop here. Safeties off, just in case."
Weapons drawn, the two Huntresses quietly stalked up the road, wary of a possible ambush. Once they'd gotten within maybe fifty yards, they were both decently sure they found their mark.
It was a somber scene. A line of multiple cargo trucks and smaller vehicles, half-buried beneath a blanket of leaves. One truck was burned; the rest, marked with bullet holes and claw marks alike. A couple cars looked as if they'd been rammed, or maybe flipped around by an unusually strong Alpha Beowolf. Here and there, dried gore was splattered over the car bodywork, present in amounts that left no doubt as to the fate of the victims. Once the girls got close, they'd noticed that some patches of leaves stuck stubbornly to the ground, likely held in place by dried up blood.
"That our convoy?" Ruby asked while methodically clearing every vehicle they passed by, ready to blow to smithereens the first thing that moved.
Keeping one hand on her gun, Blake quickly checked something on her Scroll.
"It looks that way. Car makes check out… except that there are two trucks missing. Could've gotten away, or been left behind."
Ruby didn't comment on that. Once they made sure the area was clear, they set out to investigate.
The wreckage had clearly been sifted through. Not picked clean, perhaps, but somebody had definitely been there, and had had their pickings of the cargo left behind. Going by the amount that was missing, Ruby was inclined to believe that whoever had taken all that stuff must've been motorized — or perhaps had simply stolen the two missing trucks.
Checking things with the list of inventory they'd been provided with, it was clear that the vultures had been interested mainly in the electronics and machine parts. There was also not a single speck of Electric or Fire Dust to be found, which wouldn't have been odd if not for the fact that all the other kinds were just left there in their tubes.
As far as they could tell, the burned down truck had contained mostly foodstuffs; it was impossible to tell how much, if any, of its cargo had been taken — though Blake made note of the absence of any shards of glass and metal cans inside the wreckage.
"What do you make of it?" Blake asked, walking beside Ruby as they returned to the head of the column.
Ruby eyed the open cabin of a nearby truck. "Mm. Not sure yet," she said, hoisting herself inside. "You?"
"It kind of seems like they've been hit by the Grimm first — at least if the amount of blood and scratch marks is anything to go by. After that, someone must've swooped in and cleared the area, hence the bullet holes. But…"
"Think those jesters from yesterday could wipe out the Grimm?" Ruby asked.
Blake nodded, watching curiously how Ruby pulled out her first aid kit and started perusing its contents. "Yeah, that's the thing. Small-fry they could maybe handle, but anything tough enough to knock a SUV over? No way, unless they've had some explosives on them." She eyed the ground below the vehicles warily, taking issue with the way most of them stood in a neat, straight line. In the meantime, Ruby picked a pair of forceps and started poking around the bullet hole punched in the driver's seat.
Blake carried on with her musings. "I suppose the larger Grimm could've simply left the site by then… but then again, there's no skid marks, or anything to suggest that the convoy's been in a hurry... it's like they'd been ambushed during a pit stop."
After a while of poking and pulling, Ruby managed to wiggle a small piece of lead free of the seat.
"Orrrrr," she drawled, taking a sec to examine the bullet in her palm, "it's the bandits that attacked first." Glancing Blake's way, she pulled back her arm to throw. "Catch."
The fellow Huntress easily succeeded. Blake shook her head a little at Ruby's fast and loose handling of forensic evidence, but didn't remark on it — it's not as though anyone was likely to come all the way there and double-check their findings in a lab.
Blake frowned at the dark discoloration she spotted around the tip and rifling marks. "Blood."
Already eaten corpses don't tend to bleed.
After briefly putting her finger inside the bullet hole, Ruby leapt outside. With the rough idea of the firing angle kept in mind, she aimed a finger gun at the driver's seat and took a couple steps back.
"Fired from… hereabout, unless it bounced off a bone or something." Considering she didn't know squat about the height of the shooter, it was a very rough guesstimate. One thing she was decently certain of, however: going by the sideways and upwards penetration angle, the shot must've been taken from the ground right next to the cab — and without the car door in between.
Ruby studied Blake for a little while, quietly observing how cogs turned inside her friend's head. In the back of her own mind, a barely contained anger simmered.
After a little while, Blake straightened a little, seemingly having arrived at her own conclusion. "They left the wounded alive, so that Grimm would come and cover their tracks," she quietly muttered before seeking out Ruby's gaze.
Ruby just nodded. She couldn't tell whether the bandits intended to hurt someone from the get go, or if it had happened by accident. Neither could she say if it had been their intent to leave the wounded to die, or whether they'd simply taken them for already dead. Whatever the case might've been, the victims of the raid had ended up stranded in inoperable vehicles as nothing but feed for the Grimm.
"Motherfuckers."
Brushed with a thin layer of mist and rime, trees and grass sparked in the morning light.
Weiss closed her Scroll. It seemed that the other half of team RWBY had had an early start that day; the last time they'd checked in was with the break of dawn, already about to leave the town they'd been staying at. There had also been some complaining about cold bathrooms… but that was neither here nor there.
Weiss and Yang wouldn't be too far behind. They were packed, dressed and ready — all that was left to do was for Yang to fetch her bike from the shed in the back. Which, she was admittedly taking her time with. Weiss had heard Bumblebee briefly revving to life, but it had been minutes already and there was no sign of Yang still; if it continued for much longer, they were going to miss their flight to Vale. Not the end of the world, perhaps, but a little annoying all the same.
Just when she was about to get off her seat on the planter and check on Yang, her missing teammate rounded the corner and entered her view. "Why so long?" Weiss asked as she watched Yang park her bike.
Yang chuckled. Having grabbed the black helmet that hung off the bike's handle, she walked a little closer. "Final check-up. Would you rather risk Bee dying on us, days of walking from Vale?"
"Fair point," Weiss admitted, "but why not do that yesterday?"
Caught, Yang hesitated mid-step, only to tactically ignore the comment and put the spare helmet in Weiss' chest. "Here's yours."
The corner of Weiss' mouth lifted a little, if not for long. She looked down at the helmet — graphite black, with some gray accents and a little bumblebee skillfully sketched on with a purple sharpie. It was Blake's, of course. Unlike Yang's, it covered the wearer's whole face — something to do with the wind pressure driving Blake nuts on their rides, if Weiss recalled correctly.
She felt a little weird, borrowing it.
"Does it bother you at all that Ruby took Blake hunting?" she asked.
"You mean, whether I'm worried they gonna bang behind my back?" Yang questioned in turn, raising an eyebrow.
Feeling like she had just dunked her whole face in a bonfire, Weiss quite nearly inhaled her own spit. "Goodness, no! Perish the thought."
Yang snorted, a toothy grin breaking through her poker face. "Relax, I'm just tryin' to get a rise out of ya." Paying no heed to Weiss' scowl, Yang considered the question, but was quick to bob her shoulders. "Not really. Sure I miss her a little, but I've heard giving each other some space is pretty healthy for the relationship." She studied Weiss for maybe a second, then came over and sat down right next to her.
"Are you upset Ruby left you with me?" Yang asked in her gentle voice.
Still a little hot in the face, Weiss shook her head. "'Upset' isn't the word I'd use, no. I understand and don't begrudge her reasons, it's just—" She cut herself off, coughing out a dry laugh. "Ah, look at me, making it about myself again."
Weiss felt Yang nudge her knee with a loose fist. "It's okay."
Weiss' chest rose with the tide of a deep breath as she relented. "I guess I'm a bit uneasy. A part of me wants to say that I'm just afraid of changes in my life right now… except it's not exactly true." She wrapped her arms around the helmet, kind of hugging it to her abdomen. "I'm talking to Whitley, attending therapy… hell, I'm even entertaining the idea of giving Mother a chance. Those are all changes — and not small changes, at that. And yet, they don't make me nearly as… discombobulated."
Yang giggled at the word, but didn't dwell on it. Her smile dimming, she asked, "Did you talk with Doc about it?"
Weiss hummed. She'd gone to the doctor a little early, just the day prior, so that her visit didn't coincide with the hunt. It'd ended up being a little shorter, but she'd appreciated the chance still. "Mm, a little. She posits that it's less about change in general, and more about my sense of stability," she spoke, then turned her eyes at Yang. "You three are my 'safe space'; Ruby, especially. We've got our dynamics, our MOs, our roles, routines... Doctor suggested that my place in this team — with everything that it entails — is my sense of stability. Something to fall back on when everything else is changing."
Having let out a quiet 'huh', Yang sat on that revelation for a little while. Then, she shot Weiss a curious look. "Think she might be onto something?"
With a heavy sigh, Weiss stood up. "I can't outright debunk it, if nothing else," she said, then put on Blake's helmet. "And it would explain why I feel like I landed on a wobbly rock, the moment anything about our team dynamics is shaken up."
"Was it the same when Blake and I hooked up?" Yang questioned while helping Weiss secure the helmet in place.
"Not entirely? Thing is, you getting together was a process, and both Ruby and I had seen it coming." The acoustics of the helmet did a number on Weiss' hearing, but Yang seemed to understand her speech perfectly fine. After a couple of final tugs, Yang was satisfied with the fit and gave Weiss a little knock right on the noggin. "Hey!"
Yang just grinned and walked over to the bike to put her own helmet on.
"What did take some getting used to," Weiss picked up, "was the two of you not being around as much. Think dates, or your stay with her parents last month."
Yang looked at Weiss curiously while fumbling with the strap under her chin. "Huh."
"Whereas this," Weiss spoke, spreading her arms as if to take the scene in, "me getting paired up with you, a week after the blowout between Ruby and I… wobbly rock, as I said." She shot Yang a hesitant glance, belatedly realizing that all her complaining made it seem like she didn't want her company. "Don't… take it the wrong way."
Yang defused Weiss' worry with a smile. "No prob. I think I get ya. Hop on."
Ruby knew not what woke her up; perhaps some dark dream that made away like a thief in the night, or maybe a complaint of her stomach. Whatever the reason might've been, she became acutely aware of her own self — and of the oppressive darkness that surrounded her.
Soon, cold tendrils of uncertainty crept beneath her skin, and with it came unease. Was she even actually awake? She had her eyes open… hadn't she? She blinked, or tried to at least, but nothing was brought into view. She couldn't hear anything, either, so she tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy, or constricted. She tried to sit up, only for a wave of vertigo to knock her back… down?
Was she lying down? Standing? Hanging…?
Was she even anywhere?
She could feel her own pulse. Feel it in her neck, intense and frantic — feel it in her fingers, like her skin was wrapped too tightly around her flesh and bones, about to tear itself apart. She sucked in a shaky breath. The air tasted like static, leaving a weird, tingly feeling on her lips. She drew in still, deep as she could… which wasn't very much; even what little she managed was done with a deal of difficulty, as though her chest was buried deep beneath a blanket of dirt.
Was any of it real? Was she even real… or just a hallucination of a fading mind?
Then, it came, midst the darkness and dead silence. First, like a whisper in the back of her head, but soon growing to a roar that drowned out all hope and reason. Like she was blind and deaf and buried, and not alone in her cage. With a thing of hell breathing down her neck.
Dread, and the world's ending.
A panicked whine tore from her throat as she began to kick and thrash and struggle. Cornered by some beast, she threw herself at her prison with all her strength, and eventually felt the walls give in. There was a snap, followed by a tearing sound — and she was free. She still couldn't see anything, but she sensed that her arm and elbow pressed against something. She used it to her advantage, pushing away from the surface and propping herself up.
She tried to crawl away, but it was like her legs were caught up in a web of sorts. Desperation welling up in her throat and nearly choking her, she wildly flailed her arms around… and they connected. Pain flared through her right hand as she caught something with her backhand, then—
Something crashed to the ground.
The noise made her heart jump up her throat, but it was also a slap to the face that stirred her awake. She froze, though her shaking didn't subside.
'Oh no.' A flash of clarity amidst that maddening, disorienting nothingness. 'Nonononono, not this again!'
She had finally realized what was going on, but the knowledge helped her little. The terror didn't become any less real, whereas her heart got even more frantic, each beat feeling like it was to be her last. She was already falling, and would have to crawl her way back up.
Blind, she frantically felt around the floor — for it was a floor — until she felt her pinky graze against something small and cool. A weak whimper slipped out as she heard the object slide across the ground, off into the unknowable void. Like she was being chased by some hellbeast, she began to drag herself after the sound, utterly desperate.
She didn't get very far before the door to the room opened, letting inside the blinding beam of a flashlight.
'No!'
"Ruby?" In the soft, diffused light, Ruby saw Blake's face fall as soon as their eyes met. Blake ran up to her and knelt by her side, grabbing her arm; the touch felt like lightning, making Ruby start and slap the hand away. Blake recoiled, but wouldn't leave Ruby's side, watching her with a gaze the latter couldn't face. Feeling like her head had been put inside an oven, Ruby wanted to scream.
A wish, crushed and turned into dust. 'I'm broken.'
She wanted to move away, but the vertigo kept her in place; even though she was on all fours, the floor seemed very far.
"Go… the Grimm…" she managed to croak out.
She didn't want to be there. She didn't want to be seen.
Blake took Ruby's hand in hers, and didn't let go when Ruby tried to slip away. "Let them come for all I care." She then continued to speak to her, but nothing of her efforts got through. It wasn't that Ruby couldn't hear her; rather, it was like she was listening through a waterfall of white noise. Not a single word she could grasp and focus on, feeling like she was listening to someone speak in a language she barely recognized.
'She saw' rang through her head on repeat.'She saw.'
Her thoughts were racing with manic speed; thoughts of her life being over, of never feeling happy again, of being alone and of Salem and of dying in some forgotten shack in the woods. She was hyperventilating, but it was like she was getting no air at all. She could see just fine, but nothing was in focus, as if she herself was fading from the world. Even the floor seemed soft and ethereal to her pulsing fingers, making her fear that she was about to just phase through and fall, and fall, and fall.
Knowing that she had to ride the wave out, Ruby willed herself to breathe deeply and at a set pace; it felt hopeless at first, but, with some great effort, she managed to wrangle it under a modicum of control. She still felt like she was about to fall through the world, so she squeezed Blake's hand and tried to focus on her surroundings.
There was her sleeping bag, still wrapped around her legs; then there was the Scroll she'd knocked away, and the vintage oil lamp she'd thrown to the ground with her panicked flailing. Beside her, Blake's flashlight lied on the wooden floor, pointed at nothing in particular; its light reflected off the wall and bathed the abandoned hunting cabin in a soft glow. Finally, there was the glove on Blake's hand — the very same Ruby had made for her a few weeks prior.
Bedroll, Scroll, lamp, flashlight, glove — and then back again.
After some time, she fixed her eyes on a single spot and began writing in the thin coat of dust that covered the floor. Slowly, methodically, trying to focus on feeling out the grain pattern below her fingers, rather than on the constant pulsing she experienced throughout her body. Once she was done, she continued to trace the letters on the ground, as if to carve them into the wood itself. Only after she no longer felt like she was about to fall did she stop.
Leaning back and sitting on her knees, she took in her handiwork.
Real.
"Better now?" Blake quietly asked.
Ruby's slight shaking was a proof enough that she was far from 'fine', but she no longer felt like she was about to pass out or die from a stroke. Pulling her hand from Blake's grasp, she gave her a stiff nod, although she didn't have it in her to look up from the floor.
"Give me a moment." When Blake wouldn't budge, she drew in a shaky breath and grabbed fistfuls of her hoodie. "Please," she pleaded, and hated herself for the tremble in her voice.
Blake hesitated, but ultimately gave in. "Okay. I'll be just outside."
Once Blake left the cabin, Ruby freed her legs of her bedroll and slid her butt over to the nearby wall. There, she tucked her knees under her chin and curled into a ball, hiding her face in her arms.
She didn't cry, nor did she scream. She didn't even think all that much; she just sat there for some time, feeling empty. It wasn't the kind of emptiness coming from clarity or some release, but rather the emptiness of a shutdown and a desire for oblivion. She didn't know how long she lingered in that daze, but her pulse had managed to even out by the time the cold prompted her to get moving.
She felt a little weak and wobbly when she got off the floor, but she could move around without much of an issue. She quickly changed out from her sweaty clothes and dried herself off. Once she was no longer about to freeze, she picked up the flashlight and knelt down by her sleeping bag to check it out.
As she predicted, it was busted. Most likely, the zipper had to be swapped out entirely. In her struggle, not only had she ripped the slider off the rail, but she'd also torn out some of the metal teeth from the tape. The fabric around the zipper was also beginning to rip, though that wouldn't be too hard to fix.
Her jaw tightened as her fingers curled around the fabric.
She felt defeated. Pathetic, for having been scared of her own bloody bedroll. On some level, she understood it hadn't been her fault, but it did little to chase away the bitterness from her mouth.
She'd hoped that her first attack would've been the last. Now, coming down from her second, stranded in the middle of nowhere, she felt ever further from one day being okay.
She threw the bedroll to the ground and reached for her Scroll to check the time. It was barely quarter past eleven, two hours into Blake's watch.
She moved to sit down on an ancient bench, helping herself to a chocolate bar. She ate in silence, chasing her snack down with sips of water, as Glas had once mentioned it could help. The whole setting seemed surreal to her — eating candy in an abandoned cabin, all alone, surrounded by the soft shadows cast by the diffused light that bounced off the ceiling.
Once she was finished, she bundled herself up in her cloak, then, having pulled her hood low over her eyes, she stepped out onto the porch.
As promised, Blake had been waiting for her right across the door, barely visible amid the night of a New Moon. She glanced Ruby's way as soon as the latter set a foot outside, but she said nothing, opting to quietly study the girl.
"Any Grimm?" Ruby asked. Even after calming down, she still struggled to look Blake in the face, hiding behind her hood like a coward.
"None."
"Small blessings." As she moved to stand beside Blake, Ruby sensed a whiff of cigarette smoke about the girl. A frown appeared beneath her hood, but she didn't comment as she leaned against the decayed deck railing. "Sorry you had to see that," she spoke after a while of silence.
Blake clicked her tongue, turning her whole upper body to face Ruby.
"Ruby, stop it. You have nothing to apologize for, you hear?" she said, and, out of the corner of her eye, Ruby could see her lean in for emphasis. Then, after a couple of seconds without a response, Blake's posture changed. "You feel ashamed," she heard Blake state in a small voice. Ruby didn't need to look at her friend's face to tell that her ears drooped to lie flat atop her head.
"Wouldn't you?"
It was clear that Blake almost went with the kneejerk response, but she paused and weighed the answer on her tongue. "As much as I'd like to claim otherwise, you're probably right," she eventually admitted, only to add with a hint of zeal: "But I still don't think you should be. Speaking as someone who's done plenty she isn't proud of."
Blake had meant well, she knew, but something akin to anger sparked within Ruby's breast; it felt cold as it crept down her neck and sides, making Ruby pull her shoulder blades together.
"That's nice," she let out, a hair's breath away from mockery. "I'm a team leader, Blake. I should be responsible for you, not a liability."
Blake's hand slid across the guardrail, reaching out towards Ruby's. "You aren't a liability. You never were."
"Yeah? And what would've happened if some Grimm barged in when I was curled up on the floor?"
"I would've protected you. The same way you protected Weiss. It's nothing new to us."
The assertion gave Ruby a pause, and for a precious few moments Blake managed to reach her. Then, a wave of cold slammed shut the gates of the heart, with Ruby's mind sharpening even that bit of kindness into a jagged knife.
'The same way Yang protected you?'
She had to swallow, such was her disgust with the words she'd stayed at the tip of her tongue.
"You wouldn't call Weiss a 'liability', would you?" Blake tried to argue.
"No. But it's not the same. She got wounded in a one-off work accident. Me?" Her frame rocked by a sigh, Ruby leaned over the railing and brought her hands up, lacing her fingers at the back of her head. "Moments like this make me feel like a time bomb. I hate it."
"Is it random?" she heard Blake ask, a bit timidly. "What puts you in that state, I mean."
Ruby's right hand fell back onto the rail. "I've heard it can be, but… I don't think so, in my case. So far, anyways." Her voice was barely over a whisper, and yet it felt uncomfortably loud midst the silence of the night; every now and then, she'd hear some nocturnal critter skitter off into the dark, but the air was unnervingly still.
Her eyes turned towards the skies above. Stars were both plentiful and striking on the moonless firmament, so far from city lights. There was beauty there, one that not many got to see in their lifetime, but Ruby was in no frame of mind to appreciate it. In her, it stirred a longing for light and hope, both seeming as distant like the nebulae overhead.
"It's that weird mind-void Salem put us into. The feeling of being a tiny little ant trapped 'neath some huge-ass dome, blind and deaf and unable to go anywhere, all the while you just know there's something nearby," she explained. "The world stops feeling real, kind of. I stop feeling real. Everything sort of… goes out of focus, and it's like I'm falling somewhere where there's only fear and vertigo. Like I'm with her."
It took Blake a few seconds to find her voice again.
"Was it some bad dream?"
Ruby blew a small huff. "It kind of felt like it, but no. Waking up was the real nightmare."
"What started it, then?"
Ruby glanced over her shoulder, then rolled her wrist for a bit as she sought the right term. "What's it called… sensory deprivation?"
Having blinked away her confusion, Blake tentatively looked the same way. "It's not that dark inside, is it…?"
Ruby snorted. "Blake, I don't know what it's like to you back there, but I'm a measly human, remember?" She rubbed her own arm for a semblance of comfort. "It's pitch-black, and quiet like a grave."
Blake replied with a soft 'oh', and that was that.
Ruby had always found it easy to just… be around Blake. Without words, without actions, without touch — without anything. The silence could simply be silence, rather than tense, or awkward, or… complicated. She felt similar around Weiss, most of the time, but the reason was different. With Weiss, such was the nature of their relationship. Blake, on the other hand, was simply that kind of person. She could perhaps be a little pushy, at times, but her presence was calm and comforting in a low-key way, striking a careful balance between oppressive attention and cold indifference.
Minutes flew by before Blake decided to speak up.
"What now?"
"I feel like I should ask you that question," Ruby replied, finally — finally — managing to look Blake in the eye beneath the rim of her hood. "Do you think we should abandon the hunt?"
Blake's response wasn't immediate. Good — Ruby wouldn't have accepted blind support at that point.
"No. I trust you."
Words had power, and 'trust' was one especially dangerous, Ruby felt. It planted a seedling of emotion in her ribcage — what kind of emotion, she could not discern.
"But what if it happens again, at a time when we're both in danger?"
Blake let out a sigh, then smiled in a knowing sort of way, like she'd been expecting Ruby to go for that line of reasoning.
"Ruby, you've kept your cool in the middle of an ambush, and with civilian lives at stake to boot. You've got this."
Ruby wetted her lower lip, feeling the seed sprout into anxiety, and fear, and resolve.
"Alright." A small, borderline hysterical chuckle bubbled up within her chest. "Doc will have words with me. She was none too happy when I told her I'd gone hunting without consulting her first."
Blake sent Ruby a long stare, her back straightening. "You didn't tell her we'd be heading out soon."
"I did, this time. Rather, she asked me to be careful, and to just bail if I feel like I can't take the stress anymore."
"And can't you?" The words hung in the air between them for a second or two.
"Dunno. But that's the question, isn't it?" Ruby quietly replied, looking at the darkness beneath her feet. "I'm not sure how panic attacks factor into the Ruby-stress-o-meter. One moment I've got my crap together, the next… you've seen it for yourself."
Blake hadn't said a thing, but Ruby sensed her move. As she glanced her way, she could just-about make out her silhouette in the starlight, and realize that Blake was offering her a hug. She quietly burrowed her face in Blake's shoulder, remaining like that for maybe a minute.
"Do you think you'll be able to fall back asleep?"
"I'll try," Ruby said, pulling away. She damn well should catch some more rest; running a hunt on anxiety and two hours of sleep was just asking for trouble. "Got a couple of podcasts saved to my Scroll; should do nicely for white noise." She also planned to leave a lantern on throughout the night; a waste of Dust, perhaps, but she was afraid of the alternative.
"True crime?" She couldn't quite see it, but there was a smirk in Blake's voice.
Ruby mustered a weak smile, slowly beginning to drift away from her friend. "You know it. Goodnight. And thanks."
"Anytime. Sleep well."
Already on her way back inside, Ruby turned around and raised her finger in a semi-playful warning. "And don't even think about not waking me up for my watch. Imma kick your butt."
"Right."
She quietly slipped inside. Behind a closed door, there was no need to put on a facade.
Author's Note:
Hii!
As you've probably noticed, it's only part 1 of the chapter. To be honest, I've been in two minds about splitting it. On one hand, it felt kind of unnecessary, as I'm moving at a steady pace, and two of the seven scenes for part 2 are already written out. On the other, there are two other scenes that I haven't even touched, and either of those could feasibly blow up in size once I start writing them. Might, might not.
Since I've got no idea how long it's gonna take, I figured it'd be better to drop a shorter update and not keep you waiting. Besides, I always feel a little weird about dropping 20k long colossi on you.
Gotta say, I'm decently pleased with my pace this past year — I've written nearly 90k words in a little over twelve months, one and a half of which I've been away. I even got a pretty snazzy progression graph, courtesy of TrackBear; honestly, I think it just keeps my probably-ADD brain happy.
The illustrations are also slowly but steadily coming along. It's been… a journey, to be sure, but I think I'm satisfied with the progress I'm making. It eats into the time I can spend writing, but I feel it's worth it.
As a musical side-note, the last scene of this chapter has a theme of sorts – Escaped, by Emily Evans. As with Moonflower in In Vino, lyrics don't fit at all, but the vibe of the song carried me through the whole thing – especially the convo with Blake. It was quite a difficult scene to write, and I hope I handled the subject matter with the care it deserved – you be the judge.
On the likely chance I won't update again this month: happy new year, and merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! Here's to another productive year, I guess!
Guest: To be fair, Christmas came early last year, lol. You did make my day with that line, though.
FFN has turned e-mail notifications into an opt-in system some years back; it is also supposed to opt you out every six months (which is probably what happened to you). Myself, I have some serious doubts whether it's actually working properly, as I don't remember being unsubbed once; then again, the whole notification system hasn't been working properly (or at all, really…) for a good chunk of the past year. My guess is, FFN has been shifting their focus towards their mobile app, but I might be totally off-base.
In any case, it warms my heart to hear that AtS is something you look back on fondly. Thank you!
DT610: Thanks for the support!
Yeah, I wanted to explore the idea of team RWBY working together as professionals, if just a little. "Fault" is kind of similar, I suppose, but it probably sidelines team dynamics in order to focus on Ruby herself.
I've got an idea for one more chapter like this — the recollection of the evac of Mantle. It's kinda dark and I love it. It'll probably make it into the story at some point; maybe sooner, depending on readers' interest in all this adventure-y stuff. Even got a chapter title for it!
MonkeThe2nd: Thanks! Sadly, it'll be a while till AO3 version catches up to FFN — sometime in April, if my math is mathing. Unless I start dropping chapters twice a week… which might happen; we'll see.