"Just how big is this place?"
Yang didn't know, but Josh's constant need to break the silence certainly wasn't answering that question. Normally, spouting off pace-breakers was her shtick, and yet, his constant need to fill the silence had begun grating her nerves. Although, she was one to talk; Weiss had given the same sentiment to her a few times before. Was this how it felt to be annoyed by someone's chatter?
"No idea." But she did her best to reel it in; she couldn't blame him for being jumpy. Heck, her own fists were rearing to go. "But it doesn't seem like the echoes are all that good at finding a way out."
"Nope. Doesn't seem like it." Okay, so maybe he wasn't exactly great at reading the memo either. Sighing, she considered letting it go, until he said something that... sparked her interest. "You'd think Gar would have more of that stuff lying around here. I mean yeah, it's expensive, but he seems like the guy who's always prepped for anything and everything to go wrong."
"Yeah... he is." Slowing her walk, she felt one of the others bump into her; Josh, based on account of his voice.
"Hmm?" She heard him take a step back. "Is something the matter?"
"The dust..." Momentarily, she tried looking back. It was small, tiny even, but something about this whole fiasco didn't add up.
"Something about it?" Josh asked, and she eyed him over. Maybe now wasn't the time, but hearing him mention it... she just couldn't let it go now.
"When his buddy, Fris, sent me into a cell with Raspberry... You didn't come along."
"Huh?" Josh lifted a brow, mouth drooping a little, before rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean... Yeah. I uh... I guess I didn't. What about it?"
"How?"
"What's that?"
"You were right next to me." Yang scrutinized his face, looking for any signs of lying. "And yet I was the only one taken; I had to wait for you to show up with Jay. Why? Why weren't you brought along."
"Well that's because..." He trailed off into nothing for a minute, grabbing the tip of his chin and pacing back and forth. Several times he attempted to speak, only to fall short. "That's a very good question."
"You don't know?"
"Excuse me," Raspberry said, stepping in between the two. "But did you just say your friend here was with you when the dust hit?"
No, I just like wasting my own time.
"Yes." Sadly, she couldn't speak her mind; not entirely. Raspberry's expression shifted into something... different. Not hostile, happy, sad, or anything simple. If Yang were to pick a word, she'd go with 'unsettled.'
"You know... Before being captured myself, I had a few buyers-" Raspberry cringed, just a smidge "-of mine mumbling amongst themselves regarding someone having a hit put out on them. Somebody who, they were saying, wasn't affected by dust."
"Why are you telling us this?" Yang got the memo, mostly, but she hoped to be wrong.
"Think about it. Fris sends you to me. He had a crystal, and instead of using it to escape with the boy, he used it on you and returned by foot. Why?" Raspberry twisted an eye to Josh, and then back to her. "Unless, of course, he couldn't."
"Are you saying Jay has guns after him? Because that's what it's sounding like." Yang knew what it meant when a gang had your name on their list; nobody survives the lists. While she had never been on one herself, she'd heard more than enough stories to know just how effective those hired guns were.
And how excessively you needed to piss someone off to achieve that.
"Not only that, but if that rumor is true, then it also means he's untouchable by anything relying solely on dust. The only rumor I heard tossed around exclusively was poison; he could apparently shrug it off."
"And who's saying that?" Yang wasn't sure exactly what about this situation got her so upset, but she really really didn't like how extensive that rumor was.
"... No matter how loyal someone is to you, they'll always have their gripes. People talk, and they scheme, and..." Raspberry again grimaced, her scowl stretching low as she muttered in a low tone. "To keep a business like ours alive, you need a finger in every pie, even the most lavish of ones."
Josh's mouth gaped, his face falling into shock before he muttered himself.
"My god." Raspberry looked away, but Josh continued. "You... they have men in every group... The White Fang, the Spiders, Junior's..."
"Even Atlas and Vale." Raspberry chuckled solemnly following that last one. "Although, I'm fairly certain the top Vale representative for this business had his head sawed off. So at least there's that."
"Come on!" Josh marched ahead, brushing her aside with a huff, even swiping her scroll.
"Hey!" She wanted to say more, but he'd begun aiming the light at the roof. And so she settled down; just enough to ask, "what are you doing?"
"Looking for a vent. We need to go now. If there are bastards close to Junior and the others, then they need to know; they also need to know about the target on Jay's head." Before anyone could ask why, he spat it out. "This place looks old, real old. Heat rises, so if you want to cut corners during construction of a home, you usually set up the heating system on the ground floor or basement, and then drill holes going straight up to the next floor."
"Yeah, I get it, but how will a vent help?!" Yang followed along, slamming her boots down with every step.
"Jay said you and your team were fighters. He said you're the strongest of them all, back when I first got introduced to his crew at Juniors."
"Thanks for the compliment, but what does that have to do with anything?"
Josh paused, looking to have found their prize. Smirking, he turned to her.
"Vent's usually have a bunch of hollow space around them. Only the surfaces where they connect get solid protection, minus the hole cut for the vents. Makes it easier to climb into a cubby when you need to fix or replace pieces. So..." He pointed up. "Think you can punch a hole through it?"
"Can I punch a hole through it, he says." Yang stepped up, cocking her gauntlets. "Just who do you think you're talking to?"
No wall has ever stood in her way before, and with a hole in it?
The roof above didn't stand a chance.
.
.
Of all the times to be blindsided by Beacon drones, why did it have to be now?
Emerald had half a mind to just run. They'd instantly render themselves incapable of showing their faces anywhere around the school and Vytal Festival celebrations, but that beat losing-
"Sup."
Or Mercury could just call right out to them, waving with that goofy playboy grin all nonchalant. That was okay too. Their reactions played out about as casually as everyone else in similar situations: a total stare-down. The only exception to the status quo ended up being Ruby Rose, who slid to her knees and immediately started shaking Jay.
Her wild eyes turned up at them, and she nearly shouted.
"Why isn't he waking up?!"
Mercury gave another cute wave, smiling boldly.
"Well hello to you too."
"Pardon us." And in came the others; wonderful. Weiss Schnee, the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company; literally anyone else would have been better. Emerald bit her tongue, as well as the instinctual scowl, allowing the girl her word. "But can either one of you explain what's going on here?"
Her eyes drifted to Jay, and then back to them, and her hand, while already on the hilt of her weapon, clenched around its pommel.
"Yeah. Wild, isn't it." Mercury gave Jay's arm a light, playful nudge with his boot. "Walking in on this probably wasn't part of the schedule today." A chuckle escaped him. "Makes it look like we killed him."
"You did this?" Ruby peered, her face full of fret. Emerald wanted to slap herself, but refrained.
"Nope." With one finger, he pushed her down by the forehead, before pulling away and tossing a fast look to Jay. "And we don't think he's dead either."
Blake Belladonna stepped up; Adam's old squeeze, by Cinder's account. Unlike the prissy princess, at least this one had some blood on her hands, although Emerald doubted the kitten carried that fire in her belly anymore. How anyone didn't notice the way the bow atop her head irregularly twitched would forever remain lost on Emerald.
"What exactly happened here?"
Mercury shrugged.
"We're not really sure. One moment the streets are nice and empty with everyone off learning what a police car is, and then bam! From out of nowhere we see a guy limping on our way to the club." Mercury rubbed the back of his neck, eyes shut and rolling his mouth back and forth as he "struggled" to recall what exactly he saw. "Personally, I didn't get a good look at him before our buddy here fell out of his hands. I think that's when he saw us, because he booked it."
"That's it?" Weiss didn't seem entirely on board. "He just ran off?" Or maybe she was.
Emerald, keeping her jaw from going slack, blinked a couple of times. From Ruby worrying over their target's body to Weiss and Blake pondering every word, Mercury had them by the reins. For all the times he acted the nuisance, his edge never dulled.
"Yep." Mercury popped the p, ignoring the upturned eyebrow from Weiss and kneeling down beside Ruby before lopping his attention on her. "He a friend of yours?"
"He?" Blake squinted a tiny bit, and Emerald took back all the praise she'd recently assigned her partner.
"Yeah." Mercury kept his voice playfully even. "Saw his cock bulge." Before he pulled out the nine yards stare with his mouth drawing an even line. He shot another look up to the two, tilting his head for effect "Or, am I getting this wrong?" His head then quickly nodded over. "He or she isn't exactly awake to say."
"No... You're correct." Blake flushed a little, her bow bending slightly. "It's just that most people think he's a woman."
"Eh." Mercury tossed out a shrug, returning to Jay. "I've seen enough pretty boys by now to grow used to them; especially here in Vale."
"Here in Vale?" Weiss let her arms cross, her face more relaxed with loose features. "Pardon my question, but are you new here?"
"You bet." He didn't look back, seemingly too busy with Jay - giving him a few pokes in the cheek. "We're visiting for the Festival. Team Haven, if you catch my drift."
"Oh... You're here early then." The Schnee's eyes quickly widened. "N-not that there's anything wrong with that."
"The early bird gets the worm," Mercury said, making Emerald actively groan from having to hear that grandpa-esque quote. They were seventeen, not seventy.
"Heyheyhey!" Ruby stumbled over her own words, growing in both volume and ferocity. "He's waking up!"
Everyone rushed around to see his eyes peel open for the first time, and before anyone could speak, his hands were wrapped firmly around Ruby's throat.
.
.
His whole body felt numb, but even so, Jay could still pick out the multitude of hands all over him, and an almost sickening tidal wave to go with them.
Everything, while blurred, mashed into solid shapes and colors, and while slowly things like sound began to join the fray, so too did he firmly grasp just exactly what situation he had, once again, found himself buried within. Ahead of him both Weiss and Blake shot forward, grabbing hold of his arms for some odd reason. The dark toned hands prying away at his fingers belonged to Emerald. While he would normally question how she found him, or if Cinder's faction had somehow jumped into things already before it was time…
Seeing Ruby's bleeding neck, and his own nails digging in, drew his mind to worse places.
An ordinary person would have let go, but for the moment, his hand's weren't his; they refused to let up. Refused to obey. Both thumbs dug in deeper, drawing more blood and screaming that finally broke the blunt mash of everything around him. Jay couldn't think, not properly anyway, and while he would have made a face or even tried to speak, those too stood yards from his grasp.
Paralysis, but with motor function, and the wheel refused to turn.
"LET GO!"
His nose crunched inwards, breaking, but not inflicting pain. Weiss's heel would probably leave a mark, but Jay was too busy just lying amongst the muddy alleyway water - that's where he appeared to be, looking up from his place amongst the discarded trash and the blood filling mouth. Salty, with a steel tang; it didn't make up for the lack of hurt, but it was a start.
Rough arms pulled him up, binding his own behind his back as he was hauled to his knees. Ruby's chokes rattled the air, infecting his ears with constant reminders that he could never, ever escape what he was. It was easy to argue when one won't fight back, he'd been on the receiving end before for his own tough talk. Nobody took him seriously, which was one of the few things he was thankful for.
But this time, he didn't have a choice, not really.
"Easy there buddy." He could pick out Mercury's voice expertly; Cinder's pawns were here... and they had just saved Ruby from him. "Don't make a scene, okay?"
Jay heard the words, but refused to speak, allowing his head to hang low, and watching as the blood dripped down his nose, mixing with the disturbed puddle. Until the stinging slowly began to settle in, he wouldn't, and couldn't, look up.
"What the dust is wrong with you?!" Weiss said, shouting out every word to a backdrop of white noise. Several stomps his way, and then she pulled him up by the hair, staring at him with so much hatred he could almost quake. "Do you have any idea what-!"
"W-wait." Several rough coughs peppered Ruby's voice as she tried to speak. Both sides of her neck bore bloody slits, matching Jay's nails, the ones he used to harm her. "It's-!"
"Ruby." Blake placed a hand on her shoulder, and while she didn't carry the same rage Weiss did, the look on her face featured anything but trust. She didn't quite squint, but the curl of her lip revealed her analytical approach. "Don't. Let Weiss speak."
"There's nothing to say." She let him go, but he remained fixated on Ruby. The prickles of tears in her eyes, while upsetting, had nothing on the twitching she underwent whenever he looked at her. Following every blink, her breath stopped. "Come on. Let's go." Weiss cast her almost ragged ponytail behind her shoulder, not sparing a look back. "Clearly he's not in the mood."
"But I-" Blake stopped her again, wrapping an arm around Ruby's shoulder as she helped the startled girl up. Ruby, although she didn't appear to want it, was thus carted off by her friends.
"I was..." Going to kill her.
Was that even him? What about the creature? Could it just take over its body whenever it wished? If so, then that would mean...
"Hey, uh..." Mercury waved a hand before his eyes. "You okay?"
"Mercury..." The identified boy's eyes widened.
"Do I... know you?"
"No..." Maybe goading them... "But I know you." He switched his view to the other of Cinder's tools. "And you, Emerald: Cinder's personal bitch."
"W-wh-" Her face got ripe and red, and soon, a blade was to his throat; good.
"Easy Emmi." Or maybe not. Mercury, quick on the draw, had her pulled away. Jay let himself lay against the puddle, considering if turning over to take in the water would work, until one more voice interested him, and he lifted his head.
"Curious~"
Cinder Fall herself stepped in from behind, not touching him, but getting eerily close. Her eyes promised sensual kisses under the moonlight, covered in hot wax, but surrounded by a field of black roses. She grinned in her own saucy way, as she always did, before making her wonders heard.
"You seem to know them, and yet, they do not know you~"
"I'd be lying if I said I was surprised." Jay pushed himself up, hands quaking; nails still reddened with blood, despite being in a pool of his own. Had he washed Ruby's off? Who could say? Maybe it was his own which seeped into his skin. It hardly mattered either way. If there was anyone capable of protecting her, it was - ironically enough - her greatest adversary. "Salem's coincidental queen."
The faint constriction of Cinder's pupils matched her later season's self perfectly. They regained their steadiness, but her vocals lost that luster, settling for a more... monotone approach.
"You shouldn't know that."
"I know everything..."
He didn't care if he ended up in heaven, or hell.
"Every little detail of your lives..."
Josh was strong, one of the strongest people he'd ever met. He'd power through it.
"From the time you were battered against the trees and fencing of the farm..."
The twins could take care of themselves. They had Junior, and each other.
"Up to the days of mopping floors for the highborn bootlickers of Atlas..."
But Ruby, even if she was strong, she wasn't stronger than this. This thing had brought him here...
"To the day-"
Nothing could stand against this.
"You took away-"
It had his body, and his mind.
"Your dear-"
It brought him here.
"Precious-"
He had to die.
"Mentor-"
He couldn't let it get her.
"Rhodes."
A shimmer of light. Burning horrid fire. Twin shouts, not of rage, but fright. That long forgotten swell, lost behind torrents of excuses and a lack of justification. Here it was, the moment he'd been waiting for, for what seemed like all his life.
An honest reason to just let it all go.
It didn't come.
.
.
How long had it been since she'd heard that name?
Rhodes...
With her sword resting against his neck, she might have berated herself for the close call, but how could she not? No man alive, or dead, should know the things he did. And it was here this man, Jay, had revealed himself. For while he goaded her - that she could now see with the rage at a standstill - he looked totally at peace the moment her sword flashed into existence.
She had to remind herself of the goal: the Maiden Power.
Why...? The edge pierced his neck. Why aren't you bleeding?
Even a little would do it, but no, he carried no proof of harm besides the broken nose, of which Weiss Schnee of all people bestowed upon his face with a brutal kick. Bruising had just begun, proving he could take damage, and yet her blade looked, if she wasn't losing her mind to the flames within, to be almost ghosting through his neck.
But that fact got tossed to the wayside; entirely irrelevant when she noticed a crack in his armor. She had not killed him, and thus his peace seemed... disturbed.
A tiny chuckle escaped her, filling out into a laugh which made her sides hurt. She kept the volume as low as possible, but nothing could prevent the bellows blowing from her lungs. A man, with endlessly dangerous knowledge, sought to have it erased when caught. Jay's face gave way entirely, and his faux glare returned; she could pick it apart like string cheese.
He took a gamble, and based on that scowl so close to breaking into a full-blown shout, it hadn't paid off.
When Emerald called her with the plan and location, she'd been forced to wish Adam a fine farewell. While not the grandest of entrances, being present at his "saving" would surely get them in his good graces. But this? This was something no one could have predicted. She doubted even Salem herself, with eons of experience in both manipulation and strategy, could have read this boy completely.
"I apologise~" She gave his cheek a little brush. He didn't flinch. He did not fear her, nor anything she could do to him. A small part of her liked it. It was so… against everything Roman implied the boy to be. "I'm a bit... sensitive when it comes to matters of the past... Although clearly, you aren't quite the same~"
"What are you doing?" His tone, so even and steady under quivering lips, seemed to struggle with picking an emotion. "Aren't you going to-"
"Kill you?" She smiled, shaking her head and rolling his chin up to face her like a proper gentleman should. "Hardly~ What use is a dead man?"
"I won't help you with whatever you're doing."
"Oh, I know~" She wanted to lean in for this one: to make it extra clear. Above barely a whisper, she graced his ear with her lower lip. "I have other interests in mind."
Pulling back, she snapped her fingers.
"Take him to the railway."
Emerald hesitated.
"Are you... sure about that?"
"Of course~"
Mercury stepped beside her.
"Want him under Roman's watch?"
Cinder hummed, crossing her arms, before making sure Mister Williams saw her full unadulterated smile.
"I think that's a wonderful idea~"
Author's note
...
Bet no one saw this coming.
Josh, Yang, and Raspberry have come to some startling realizations; all brought up just because Josh himself went through a spat. But thanks to that, they got Raspberry to spill the beans on not only the hit, but also just how excessive the Faunus Trade really is.
Jay's off with Cinder's crew now. Sometimes, impatience can affect even the boldest of us, and improvisations must be made.
RWBY minus the Y clearly didn't have a good time. Was Weiss's reaction a little extreme? Perhaps, but with everything going on in her mind, alongside the display with Jay just now, can you really blame her? Blake's playing peacekeeper. And Ruby...
We'll just have to wait and see, now won't we?
Feel free to let me know your thoughts - barring you're not another AI art scam.
Until next time.