The first chapter of the new school semester.
REAPER IN RED
Chapter 36
The morning started with a full breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and most importantly, strawberries. So, so many strawberries. Strawberry pancakes were also provided, which was a nice addition. Unfortunately, I couldn't stuff my face as I was hoping to do at the brilliant sight. No, my head was still pounding, and my stomach still felt like it was flipping and groaning.
"Ugh," I groaned, dropping my head onto the kitchen table. "And I wanted to practice this morning."
"Practice?" Yang was able to hear through my groaning, perking up with a smile. "That sounds like fun! Don't want to get rusty, now do ya? Heh? Heh?" With each half-chuckle, she elbowed me in the ribs, which was doing whatever the opposite of wonders was, for crummy mood.
"Knock that off, Yang. Can you not see your sister is in a deal of pain?" Weiss rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, giving Yang a patented Schnee glare. In a softer voice, she spoke to me. "Hey, do you need anything? I have some products if you need them."
"What products?"
"You'd think after so many months together, we'd be-"
Tai cut Yang off with a clink of his metal fork on ceramic mug. "And with that, I will leave you girls alone for a little while I go feed Zwei. Let me know if you need any help training."
My human sister's giggles didn't really help answer my question.
"Do you have anything for my head too?" I asked Weiss, not paying attention to Yang and trying to give my partner the best puppy-dog pout I could manage.
"I… I think I have something in my purse back in the room. Let me check."
"I'll join you," Yang snorted as she got up to follow her out.
It was just me and Blake left now. Eating food. Or more so, moving food around my plate, while Blake ate her fill. She seemed to be enjoying it, looking pretty relaxed compared to how she was earlier in the year. I still couldn't believe how big of a deal she had made being a faunus was. People are weird.
"So, get up to anything last night?" I nearly sprayed my water everywhere at Blake's question. She gave me a look as she dipped her slice of pancake into maple syrup.
"No, nope? Nothing weird last night. Just sleeping." There. Totally normal. She definitely bought it.
"Your weirdness aside, and we'll get back to that, did you notice anything weird with the lights last night? Maybe at around two, maybe three?"
I shook my head. "Don't think so. Maybe a light turned off?"
Blake sat back in her seat, lifting a leg up and resting her chin on her knee. "Hmm, Weiss thought a light might have burnt out, but it all looked fine this morning. What sort of Grimm or monsters of you get around here? Any Higher Order?"
I had to think. What did I remember seeing here again? Right, "well, there's plenty of zombies, chimera and beowolves. Nothing too big and scary. Umm, there's probably vampires somewhere around here, likely the docks."
"Witches? Other mind controllers?"
I frowned. That was a weird question. "No witches here that I've seen. Syrens are rare in climates colder than Vacuo or Menagerie, so none of those. Reapers…"
No! Bad brain! Why did you bring up Reapers? Let's scare your team even more by bringing Grim Reapers up again.
Now Blake was looking at me weird. What did I say?!
"Reapers? I've never read anywhere that they had mind controlling capabilities."
"Well, it would make sense, right?" Ruby? What are you doing? Just say I agree. I. Agree. "How else would they be able to go everywhere and Reap humans without everyone screaming?"
Yes, brilliant job, Ruby. Are you trying to sabotage your own freedom?
"I don't think I read anything about that in Beacon's library," Blake said, with a headshake. "It does make sense though. Fringe theory maybe? They do sort of darken a place-"
"-you think that there was a Reaper around Tai -er- dad's house?" My voice was way too high pitched as I interrupted my friend. "Cuz that's just silly. It's silly. What would a Reaper want with this place anyways?"
"Right. It's not logical."
"And nobody died right?" Did anybody die? No, I'd have known. I did spend most of the night in my Reaper form after all.
"Right," Blake nodded.
"What else can make things darker?" I perked up, glad to be steering the conversation a little better than I had been before. "Shadows maybe?" Steer the conversation away! Not back to Reapers. What is wrong with me today? Maybe I was just nervous about trying to figure out my magic on command.
"Shadows?"
"Shadows! Yes! Like… clouds? Or really, really big Grimm at the window?"
"I thought you said there weren't any big Grimm around here."
"Well I don't know!" I slumped in my chair and crossed my arms. "I was just trying to help you out with your weird questions." I huffed.
Blake gave me a look. She pushed a bowl of cut-up strawberries to me. Maybe it was a peace offering?
"I don't want any strawberries," I grumbled as I popped a strawberry into my mouth, chewing it slowly.
Blake quirked an eyebrow.
"Shut up."
"Is this about training today. Is your semblance still acting up? You know you can talk to me, or Weiss about it. Or even your sister."
"I know. I'm… working on it."
"Well, we're here when you need us."
From outside, we heard dad's call of, "kids! It's gorgeous outside! Enough chatting, time for training!"
That wrapped up our conversation just in time. The two of us put some dishes on the kitchen counter, cleaning up as best as we could, before being joined by Weiss and Yang. Weiss gave me a small pill and told me to drink it with water, which I did. It made my throat all dry. Definitely not a fan. Would not eat again.
Outside really was nice. No wind that I could feel, and warm enough that nobody was wearing long sleeve shirts. At least, I assumed it was warm, because nobody was wearing long sleeve shirts. Things would be so much easier if I could find a dying person over the break. There had to be someone dying on Patch, right? Ooh, another vampire would be amazing. If there was one, there had to have been more. Even if he was super old.
Whatever, I'd check later that night. Maybe fly over the main town and give a quick scan of people's life expectancies. That was future me's problem. Now was time to start the fabled training montage!
After two hours of running, dodging -ahem, sparring- and squeezing my head so hard I was giving myself headaches, I had come to realize that training montages were not as cool as they were on my scroll. No siree, not even a little. There wasn't even any cool action music to go along with it.
Just dad's really annoying guitar "jazz instrumental" repetitive music loop which I can't even complain about because apparently, we had trained to this playlist of songs for years before we went to Beacon. I didn't even know that it was more than one song!
"Come on Ruby!" Yang called out as she fell down into another push-up. "Take a break when you're dead!"
No way was I going to wait that long to take a break. And why was that even a phrase? Humans are weird.
"What about Weiss? You're not complaining about her break!"
Weiss was sitting on Yang's back, flicking through a book on aura that I was pretty sure would be part of next semester's class material. Weiss flicked her hand towards me, "I'm helping the brute train."
I rolled my eyes with a smile, "sure you are."
"Look alive!"
I caught the water bottle that Blake tossed at me, before she blinked away, leaving a stone replica of herself behind. Appearing behind me, she leaned on my head. "Hmm, do you think it looks a little too short to be me? I don't think I got the hair right either."
"Why are you trying to make yourself out of your semblance?"
"My semblance and earth dust," Blake corrected. "I'm trying to use my semblance fast enough that I can leave behind a perfect likeness of myself."
"But why?"
"It's working on both my semblance speed and reaction speed. Perfect timing between the two should get me the results I want. More importantly, if I'm in danger, half a second can mean the difference between a killing blow and a complete miss. Same thing with my use of dust. Not all of us can be dust wielding prodigies."
The last bit was said loud enough for Weiss to hear. She flipped off Blake. "I spent the time practicing and training. It took years. Not all of us are prodigious enough to skip grades."
"She's talking about you Rubes!" Yang gasped out between huffs of push-ups.
Thank you, Yang. I had no idea who she was talking about.
Though technically, I wasn't a prodigy either. Could Reapers even be prodigies? We did tend to progress through the younger years of our lives at a much more human pace and slow down once we were a little older, so maybe prodigious? I was a prodigious baby?
I shook my head, clearing my mind. Trying to compare was too confusing. And even the thought of letting a human near a Reaper baby -Reapling according to mom- was a terrifying concept. I did wonder what a Reapling looked like. Were they like human babies? Or were they just… mini-versions of their older selves?
I think an even tinier version of me would be really funny to look at.
"Ruby! Back to training!" Came dad's voice, pulling me from the very weird spiral of thought going on in my head.
Blake gently patted my head and went back to her open spot to continue her semblance jumping. I looked over at Yang, who was still doing push-ups, but now with a light flicker of flame rolling off from her hair. Her eyes were their normal lilac, so she wasn't activating her semblance at all. Or maybe not consciously activating…
Her…
Semblance.
Huh.
Was Yang doing the same thing that I did in my really big fight against all my friends back at Beacon? Was she just trying to tire herself out so her semblance can flow more naturally?
Was my magic more like human semblances than I originally thought?
A whole lot to think about, but it didn't fully help me with what I wanted to do. I figured out that I could tire myself or confuse my brain enough, I would release some magic. Not nearly as strong as my magic in Reaper form, but strong enough to make a difference. Now that I could sort of do it while tired and distracted, I needed to learn to do it while not-tired and not-distracted.
Obviously.
So, I guess the easier of the two to figure out would be not tired, but still distracted. That meant I had to distract myself.
"Wess!"
"Yes?" Weiss gave me a minorly irritated look.
"Distract me!"
"No." She went back to reading her textbook.
Well, that didn't work how I wanted it to.
Guess it was just up to me to distract myself. Somehow. And somehow do it without completely tiring myself. Without any real ideas floating around in my noggin, I stood up from my seat, grabbed two water bottles and settled into a horse stance. Feet double-shoulder width apart and me sinking down so my knees were bent at an angle. I placed a water bottle on each leg, keeping them balanced. Lifting up Crescent Rose, I began spinning it -still in its carrying form- while trying not to drop it, or the water bottles.
Lastly, and by far the most challenging part, I forced myself to start thinking of ways to distract myself to perform magic.
While also actively trying to perform magic.
I had barely started and already my head was hurting. This was going to be a long day.
Holy ravioli guys! Reaper has reached 600 freaking followers! That's beyond crazy. Over 104k words (not including all these extra author's notes) and over a year of writing has lead us to this point. It's beyond fantastic and when I started this, it was also unimaginable. But, to be fair to 1 year ago me, I also didn't think I would have lasted this long continually writing the same story. I was confident that I would drop it after maybe 50k or just wrap it up in a quick and boring way just to get it over with and move it on to other projects. So yay me! Also, thanks to all of you. Seeing the love this story as gotten has definitely helped push me out of my funks and lulls in writing (chapter backlogs. The greatest invention in author history). So hats off to you all!
GreenTheRyno - Things are starting to happen in ways that Ruby has definitely not accounted for.
Dragonqueen1993 - I'm not egging you... yup. I am totally egging you on. Things are happening.
JackTheSpades - I am really hoping you are going to like the post-Patch section of the story. I can't say anymore, aside from we are going to be reacquainted with some familiar faces and answer one or two questions about some Ruby and Reaper lore. :P
The Tailor - The stakes don't always have to be life and death. In situations like this, it can purely be Ruby's ability to properly interact with people, or even her want to interact with people. While there are definitely some bigger stakes , sometimes the smaller stakes as simple as: "will Ruby be able to keep her friends without mind-breaking them" is all that is needed (not that that is all there is here).
ShadowMurlock - Updates have been every 14 days; exactly two weeks, for quite a few months now. The only time it is more than 2 weeks is when I let you guys know ahead of time, and less than 2 weeks, when I reach a Milestone. Like this one! :D
Dragon Lord Draco - It really is messed up. I liked giving Reapers mind-magic because... actually, I am probably going to explain pretty much everything in a future chapter. So stay tuned.
FN75 - And the march continues evermore onward. Soon! (maybe.)
TM Calypso - As we get closer, it's getting a lot more fun.
Alucard45 - I love how I've been on AO3 for two weeks, and already forgot to post a chapter. XD I am terrible at cross-posting. Gotta practice more!
See you all soon! For everyone who's been here for a while, you know the tradition. A new milestone, for a bonus chapter! Well, not really a bonus chapter, but the next chapter, published a little earlier. The goal is Thursday (like usual), but it may be delayed to Friday. So, see you all then! :D