Happy belated Valentines everyone!

REAPER IN RED

Chapter 40

I opened my eyes to see Yang stretching, basking in the warmth of the sun that shone through our window. Standing there in her sleep clothes, working at the tightness in her shoulders and lower back. Fully taking in a morning where she woke up awake and on the right side of the bed. She turned to face me, giving me a brilliant and cheery smile.

"Good morning Rubes!" She said in a much too happy voice for the kind of morning I was having.

I wasn't sure exactly what I had wanted to say, but all I know was that it came out as, "hrmbl…" to which Yang replied, "did the whittle wuby wose not get enough sleepy-boo?"

A pillow was on its way to Yang's head before she finished that thought. It smacked her satisfyingly in the face.

"You deserved that," Weiss said between delicate yawns. Ah, good old Weissy to the rescue. "Now get out of bed, Ruby. We have class this morning. Professor Port, if memory recalls."

There were groans from Yang. Blake stepped out of the washroom, a towel wrapped up in her hair. She glanced at me and I gave her my biggest half-asleep, good morning smile.

Her eyes darted away.

Huh. Maybe she was still feeling off.

My morning routine went about as usual. The sleepiness leaving me relatively quickly once I got dressed and brushed my hair. I gave myself an extra minute to shut my eyes and feel the buzzing in my skull that let me know my magic didn't dissipate around my claim as I slept. That was good to know. It would have sucked if I had to stay awake for a full month.

My claim still looked fuzzy to me. I knew the exact extent of my borders and I could feel everything going on, on the periphery. That being said, nothing at all was going on at the periphery. Like, totally nothing. No bugs or rodents crossing through. No lower order monsters, not even a mindless zombie or two. Then again, would I be able to notice zombies through my magical claim? They weren't really alive, were they?

I couldn't feel them in my Reaper form, and they were quite weak, so my mom and I mostly left them alone. They didn't bug us, and we didn't bug them. Well, except for that time in the Southern part of Sanus when mom was trying to teach me how to use my scythe when I was finally old enough to stop using it as a makeshift teething toy. Did that count? Maybe.

Either way, time for class! We were going to be learning about… something. Weiss was the only one who bothered reading the list of course material, and I was perfectly content to go in blind. These humans knew so many really cool things about monsters! Well, some of it was wrong, but that was okay. They'd learn when they got older.

"Vampires!" Professor Port seemed to shout at the top of his lungs. "These mysterious and illusive creatures shall be our first major topic. But first, let me tell you about the time I killed my first vampire. Back in the glory days, because nothing was as glorious as my very own glory days! Yes-"

And it was then I could feel about half the class stop paying attention.

"-you see, my adventure began like many others for one as wily as I! I was out hunting the Acheri, following a trail set out for me by Will o' Wisps. And, yes?"

A hand was raised. Unsurprisingly, it was Weiss's. "Sir, what exactly are Acheri?"

"Oh ho! Marvelous question, my good huntress-in-training! But slightly incorrect. For you see, it is not what are Acheri, but what is the Acheri. The Acheri is not a species of monsters to hunt, as we have studied in this class, no. But a singular creature which stalks the very desert sands of Vacuo. The Acheri itself is a creature most vile, most evil. But one not often hunted by brave huntsmen such as I! It looks very much like a young girl with dark, swollen eyes. If it passes too close to a village, it will spread disease and plague. Particularly gruesome sickness, which mainly effects children. As such, they tend to leave a trail of Will o' Wisps in their wake.

"Brave, good-hearted parents try to save their children from the creature and the diseases she brings, only to succumb to that very same plague. Will o' Wisps, as you might remember from your examination before the break, are good spirits, which are born from the souls of people who perished protecting or trying to protect those they love. It is sad to see, but since my days as a child, our technology has developed quite rapidly so that we can now track the movements of the Acheri and evacuate the areas she is nearing, long before she ever arrives. She is still very much unkillable by modern means; always appearing back in the desert some days later, but she is no more a problem that she was twenty or thirty years ago."

That answer seemed to appease Weiss, as she begun furiously taking notes on what the portly professor had recalled.

I'd never met the Acheri before. She appeared in some stories I was told as a child, about a Reaper mother who tried to turn a dying human girl into a Reaper to save its life. It was a sad story. I always cried when mom told it to me.

"Now back to the main story! I was hunting the Acheri, travelling from village to empty village, following the trails of wisps. Eventually, I cam across a particular village. Its name long lost to memory. Or at least my memory, ho ho! It was growing dark. Sun setting and the cold night air descending around me. Of course, an abandoned village would make for the perfect camping ground, so that was exactly what I did. Tearing down an entire thatched house with my bare hands to use as kindling to keep me warm and light up my path for any wayward Grimm. Not that any nearby were any match for me. This was like the time that I wrestled with a Centinal in Atlas, and- no, one story at a time. I would hate to confuse children such as yourselves with my harrowing tales of daring and adventure!

"Now," Professor Port clapped out a single loud clap. "What are the four ways to injure a vampire? Kill, wound or distract."

It was Pyrrha's turn to answer the question. "Decapitation or a stake through the heart are the two likeliest ways to kill a vampire. Fire and water equally slow a vampire."

"Your methods of killing a vampire are both true and correct!" The professor seemed to jump with excitement, his belly bouncing along with his overgrown moustache. "Your methods for slowing a vampire down however, well, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Fire will indeed slow a vampire. A vampire cannot reach through fire, but only when the fire is not spreading. If the fire is moving from tree to tree in a forest for instance, a vampire can pass through it, taking only minor damage, if that, at all. Why do you think all the buildings at Beacon are made out of stone? Why are the grounds bricked by stone and trees are fairly spread out on campus? It's surely not for decorative purposes."

Hmm, I mused. I'd never thought of that. I thought it was just because it looked cool. These humans were so smart. Yet.

"How come there is a forest around Beacon?"

"Very good question my dear Miss Rose! Why do you think Beacon keeps its forest?"

How'd he do that! He spun the question back on me. Why would Beacon Academy keep its forest? I know why I would. There were so many cool animals and creatures inside. There were nice and big caves on the outskirts, which made for perfect sleepy-holes. And who could forget about all those big Grimm to fight! Was it the Grimm? Ya, it was probably the Grimm. Huntsmen liked to kill Grimm.

"All the Grimm?" I mustered, not enjoying Weiss's eyeroll. I looked at the professor, who seemed to be motioning for me to continue. "Huntsmen like to... fight… Grimm?"

He gave me a polite smile. "That is one of two very important reasons. Good job, Miss Rose. Before we get too much off topic and I share the second reason, which does have very important implications to my grand and adventurous tale, let me bring you back to Miss Nikos's second answer. That of water. Water is an inverse of fire in many ways. So, it stands to reason that if stationary fire halts vampires, then inversely, flowing water would similarly halt them. This is very much true, from what has been seen by vampires out in the wild. They are unable to cross moving bodies of water. Rivers, streams, even a small trickle of water. If it is flowing, they cannot pass through it. With two caveats. The first and foremost, is that oceans do not count as flowing water to them. We believe that it is due to how wide the ocean is," Professor Port rubbed his large belly, as if it wasn't the ocean he was calling wide. "The second, is that it must be naturally occurring. We humans and faunus cannot pump water underground and create a vampire proof area. So remember, stationary fire and flowing water. Of these, only stationary fire had any real relevance to me on my journey to fight that first vampire I had faced in my time. My first, but not close to only.

"Now there I was, sleeping out in the middle of a desert, large bonfire from a deconstructed house. Belly full, but much thinner than it is now. With my keen intuition and wrecked sleep cycle, I woke up at the quietest sound in the vast distance. Clutching my trusty weapon tight in my hands, it took but a moment to discover that I was surrounded by five -no,- ten -no,- twenty. Yes, twenty deadly vampires!

"The fighting was long and fearsome! I held off two with a single hand and another with my foot. I cleaved through their weak points. I was a true representation of huntsmen perfection! Pay close attention to me, children."

With that, his story seemed to pause as he flung himself into a flurry of flabby action. High kicks at an angle that I was sure should have ripped his pants, spins and punches which quite surely should have tired him out if he was any normal person. I was the only one that seemed to be at all interested by his combat moves. Everyone else looked pretty disturbed. Okay, maybe it was a little disturbing when he attempted to land a jump spin-kick and end up leave scuff marks on his desk.

"Ahem," he finally slowed, shaking himself off, with a breath of relief from around the room. "yes, yes. As I was saying. My moves were fearsome in the face of such ever present danger. But I knew I would be outlasted by them. You see, they are ageless. They cannot die to age, and look very much younger than they physically should be. I could have been fighting centuries, maybe even millennia old vampires! Who knows? I could have been fighting vampires that were older than the very human race itself."

I snorted at that. Well that was just plain wrong.

"I lifted myself by my bootstraps-"

"-physically impossibly to do-" Weiss whispered into my ear. I held in a giggle.

"-and made a run for it. Using my superior speed, strength and intelligence to find a path to freedom or to a prime location to take them on once more."

None of those sounded right. Vampires are generally stronger and faster than what humans refer to as humans. And, being human themselves, obviously they'd have the same intelligence as humans. It was still so strange than humans regarded their own kind as monsters. Though, to be fair, they only recently regarded faunus as humans too. Maybe in another century or so for vampires? Who knows, unless something major were to happen, vampires would just continue to be killed by their own kind. Tragic in a way. Their natural longevity really did make them the best souls to Reap.

"As I ran through the desert looking for my brilliant moment to strike, I realized I was wandering into beowolf territory. Now, I can hear you saying, surely professor, did you not kill all the beowolves in the area prior to making camp? Well my young students! I have to leave some Grimm for others to deal with, now. Otherwise, I wouldn't be a good sport! Now, what do you do when surrounded by Grimm and vampires? Which do you fight first? Hands, hands!"

Few hands if any, rose, mine not among them.

"Mister Arc? No answer? Miss Nikos? No? How about Miss Schnee? No? Well, there is a very clear answer. And it goes back to Miss Rose's remarkable question about Beacon and our illustrious forest. Why do we keep a forest surrounding Beacon if expanding fire is so useless? When faced between fighting Grimm and vampires you fight… neither. Now, now. Put away your confused expressions. A Grimm will hunt a vampire just as much as a Grimm will hunt a human, or a vampire will hunt a human. When given a choice between battling vampires and Grimm, you use your superior intellect to fight neither. A huntsmen's greatest weapon shall always be its mind! I lead the vampires deep into the heart of that beowolf territory and as the beowolves surrounded us all, I fled. Leading them straight into an ambush."

I stared at him, stunned. He led humans straight into a Grimm massacre.

"Why worry about fire boxing us humans in at Beacon while allowing vampires through, when the very Grimm we train on in the forests surrounded our school, represent the best first defense against our vampire enemies?"

He smiled brightly under his moustache. "Now isn't that a brilliantly perfect, human tactic, hmm?"

Wow. 40 Chapters already!

Sm0key Panda - What are you talking about? This is obviously a fluff story where nothing bad will happen to our sweet cinnamon roll ever! /s

Dragonqueen1993 - 1 step done, two more to go!

firewyrm2 - Sorry about that, but chapters will remain roughly the same length throughout this fic. About 2k long. And it did focus on more than just Ruby finishing this step, though it is a pretty important one considering it took so long to reach it.

Cun - Exactly! Finally someone who recognizes my brilliance!

FN75 - Hmm, very interesting theory. Keep that thought in your back pocket for me, will you? ;)

Dragon Lord Draco - Was Blake awake? Probably not. Unless inspiration hits and she was. Unless she wasn't. Maybe.

TM Calypso - So many plot threads! How will they all come together in the end?

Semi-Neutral Nixon - Oof, how was it? I'm glad you enjoyed it and I hope you got some rest afterwards!

tiffanyblue - Updates every other monday! Unless said otherwise. I usually give notice before I'm taking time off.

Alucard45 - Yup! Ruby has started claiming her territory, but there are still two more steps to fully finalize that claim. There are definitely perks to claiming a territory. Many of which will be explained in the next couple chapters. As for the statue, many believe it to be a huntsman and a huntress, not so much a Reaper. Maybe that was what they had originally thought of it before the meaning changed? Could be interesting to think about.

DuckedHard - It definitely will be something to consider in the future.