Yo!
Another week, another chapter! Excited to get further into this story. Got some good stuff ahead, and even better stuff planned! Though, well... a good majority of that stuff is months away, so...
Ah, well, for now, let's get into this chapter!
Start Chapter 4
"What did you mean?"
Qrow turns back towards her with a cocked eyebrow, evidently unsure of just what it is she's trying to bring up all of a sudden.
They're walking down the path leading away from the house that had belonged to the murder victim. His body will be collected and examined sometime in the next hour by a team of crime scene investigators summoned by Qrow. They're clearing out to make sure they don't get in the way of the professionals, who might find something that the two of them, not at all versed in such matters, might have missed.
"Earlier, in the house, when you said the MO didn't add up… what did you mean?"
"Ah, right," Qrow clears his throat. "Well, Marcus Black is a contract killer. Professional assassin, kind of an asshole, but he doesn't kill for the reasons a normal killer will. Nothing is a crime of passion with him. It's just cold, meticulous work. Normally, the people he goes after have pretty obvious causes of… well, being killed, I guess. Gamblers who're so far in debt there's no chance they could pay it off, trying to skip town. That's a pretty common one we see. Then there's sometimes reporters, or other people who might try and dig too deeply into some of Mistral's seedy underbelly. That sort of thing. The key thing, however, is that Black isn't an idiot. He stays out of the more heavy-hitting areas. He's never killed a huntsman before. Not once. At least not that we know of, I suppose I should say. For him to suddenly murder one of Leonardo Lionheart's former guards is just… let's just say I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that."
Weiss hums out, already feeling a potential motive forming in her head herself. "Is it possible that someone might've wanted those closest to Lionheart out of the picture?"
"If you're implying that you think Lionheart might be in danger, then I'm way ahead of you." Qrow smirks. "Told Oz– er, my employer," Well, if Weiss had held any doubts about that – she hadn't – then that slip-up confirms exactly who it is Qrow's working for, "about this whole incident. Made sure he'd let Leonardo know what happened, and to beef up security. He's not going to be leaving Haven until we've got a bit more information about what's going on here. He couldn't be much safer than he is right now."
Weiss nods her head, uncertain of how to bring up the topic she wants to.
She can't exactly say, "Hey, has Leonardo Lionheart ever shown signs that he might secretly be working for Salem, the evil witch of the Grimm who I shouldn't know exists?"
Weiss feels like that would make for a pretty quick trip to being interrogated on the other end of Harbinger.
…She should probably start referring to herself as Ruby even in her own head, just to try and hammer home her fake name, but frankly, that would be very annoying. Instead, she's just going to risk making a slip-up.
It's not like she ever refers to herself in the third person.
…Actually, she had done that on occasion, during her more… colorful periods at Beacon, the memory of which will likely be keeping her up at night for the rest of her life through sheer embarrassment alone.
Qrow snickers at her. "What, eat a lemon or something?"
"Just… embarrassing memories of my childhood."
"Oh, yeah. Been there."
Weiss can imagine, knowing Qrow's rather interesting history.
"What's the plan for tracking this man?" Weiss asks, wanting to steer the conversation back towards seriousness.
"At the moment, there isn't one." Qrow admits. "We have a general sense that Black lives here in Mistral somewhere, but if you're asking where he comes from, or what we could garner from that crime scene that might lead us to him, the answer is approximately 'jack shit'."
Weiss frowns. "That… isn't particularly helpful."
"Nope." Qrow admits. "Which is why we're going to wait in the nearby town until the coroner either turns something up, or we get other info."
"Have you called in a general search for the man, then?"
"Something like that. Alright, then, Rubes,"
"Again, do not call me that."
"Again, it's sticking," Qrow smirks. "What say you and I get something to eat, and talk more about what you were doing there in that house?"
Weiss' brow furrows. "You don't trust me at all, do you?"
"Uh, all due respect lady, would you in my shoes?"
Weiss thinks about it. How she would react if a heretofore unknown figure showed up out of nowhere at a murder scene, knowing her name despite having never met her before?
She determines rather quickly that no, she wouldn't trust that person.
She sighs, but nods her head. "Right. I suppose such is only fair."
Qrow's grin grows somewhat more real, then. "'Preciate it, kid."
"Kid!?"
"What, you look like twenty, twenty-one, tops."
Weiss blushes somewhat embarrassedly. "I'm actually nineteen."
"There, see, not even graduation age back where I was from." Qrow shrugs his shoulders. "Not personal or anything, just saying, you're still a kid as far as I'm concerned."
"And how old are you supposed to be, then?"
It's a question that fits into their current conversation, whilst still, hopefully, providing Weiss with some much-needed clarity. She needs to know just where she is, chronologically. Needs to know what's happening.
"Uh… twenty-eight?" Qrow's tone is almost questioning. "Shit, probably not a good thing I don't actually know off the top of my head…"
Twenty-eight… the Qrow that Weiss knows from her time had been around forty or so years old, which…
Which puts Weiss twelve years – at least – in the past.
She swallows on the lump that's formed in her throat.
That… she can think about that more later. When she's safe to properly process her emotions.
For now, she has to focus.
"Alright." She clears her throat. "Then lead the way."
Qrow does just that, taking the two of them to a small, seedy bar in a dismally quiet town somewhere west of the capital Mistral. It's not too terribly far, judging by the fact that Weiss can just make out the tips of the buildings at the very top of the capital from the higher points in their small town.
"So," Qrow clears his throat as he downs a pint of beer in roughly twenty seconds. "Mind tellin' me what you were doing there in the first place?"
Weiss debates whether or not she should tell Qrow the truth of the matter – not all of it, obviously, but that she'd been transported from somewhere else and had ended up there without any such knowledge as to the how – for a solid moment or so. She ends up deciding on not doing that the next moment after.
The simple truth is that Qrow is perceptive. More than that, he works for Ozpin, and admitting that Weiss having been involved in a magical incident would, almost certainly, result in her being dragged back to meet the man that very same day.
She… she doesn't hate Ozpin. She understands him, in truth, and can see why he is the way that he is.
Even so, she also doesn't trust him. Not truly.
So, for now, she'll keep her distance. Let their inevitable encounter – because no, Weiss is not foolish enough to think she can entirely avoid such forever – be on her terms, not his own.
Still, that means she has to make up a story. One believable enough that Qrow won't instantly call her on it.
…Well…
"I'm a Huntress," she tells Qrow, reaching into one of the pockets on her top and pulling out her Huntress license. Luckily, they're not dated, which means Qrow's not going to see the year being twelve years in the future and immediately call her out on her bullshit. "As you can see, I'm originally from Atlas, but circumstances led me to journey here to Mistral."
"Circumstances?" Qrow questions, raising an eyebrow.
"Private circumstances, family related." She tells him, hoping that will be enough to get him to back off. To her small surprise, he seemingly does. "I'm…"
She still needs a reason for being here. She still needs to come up with something concrete
…And then she has it, all of a sudden, thrust right into her hands.
Because in this singular case, she can be honest.
"I'm looking for someone. Well, someone's, I should say." Weiss tells Qrow, speaking from the heart. "Four other people, with whom I've shared a litany of experiences. I was… cut off from them rather suddenly. I have reason to believe they are all alive, but they've seemingly been scattered to the winds. I thought I would find them here," a lie, but then, it's a tiny one in comparison to the one she's weaving right then, "But it seems I was mistaken. The only thing I truly found was that corpse."
Qrow nods his head slowly, as if trying to decipher some hidden meaning behind her words, trying to see if she's lying.
She is, but not entirely. She really is looking for her team, alongside Jaune.
His eyes narrow, his brow furrows, and then, some five seconds later, the man sighs, taps the bar, and yells out, "Bartender, another pint."
The woman acquiesces, pouring one and sliding it down towards Qrow. Unfortunately, before it can make it all the way to him, the glass hits a snag in the wood of the bar, and falls off of it, shattering on the ground.
Qrow's expression is one of resigned acceptance.
He ends up paying for the glass, despite the bartender's insistence that he'd not been at fault. Given Qrow knows he is at fault, even if not directly, he tells the woman to add it to his tab at the end. She begrudgingly accepts.
Weiss watches the entire thing without much emotion, albeit she does wonder if every day is like this for Qrow. If his semblance is constantly activating at the most inopportune times, doing things like this.
She imagines such would drive her insane, if every little thing in her life went just a bit awry.
"Welp, this has been a day." Qrow speaks to her again some two or so hours later, after having left to 'make a few calls', but probably actually transforming into a bird and flying off somewhere. Weiss doesn't need to know. "I'm going to get some shut-eye. What's your plan?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I hope you don't take offense to this, but I don't buy your story, at least not entirely."
Ah.
"And?"
"And I'd really rather keep an eye on you, instead of letting you wander off somewhere while I'm asleep." Qrow tells her, his visage one of suspicion. "That or stab me. Either or, really."
Weiss groans. "And what would you have me do to assuage your concerns?"
Qrow bristles somewhat, as if he hadn't quite expected her to respond that way. "Well, we could share a room–"
"Not happening."
"Hey, I'm not some creep, alright!?"
Weiss shoots him a flat look, and Qrow looks away, somewhat flustered.
It's almost funny how not-Qrow-like that motion is. The Qrow of her time wouldn't have gone red at such a light insinuation. But this Qrow is…
Younger, more inexperienced.
Weiss sighs. "I'll stay in the same inn as you, but we are not sharing rooms."
Qrow runs a hand up the back of his neck. "I guess that works. Word of warning, I'm not liable for stabbing you if you try and kill me in the middle of the night."
Weiss just rolls her eyes.
/
Ruby's having a bit of a weird day so far.
That might be a small understatement, actually, but she feels like it captures the general gist of how things are going.
She's also experiencing some rather heavy déjà vu.
"But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose – direction."
Does… does he really give this speech every year? Ruby's brow furrows.
Ruby had sort of assumed that such had been a thing just for them, for their class, but when she thinks about it, it's an odd thing to say to any group of children striving towards their dreams.
She mentally shrugs, before zoning back in to Glynda Goodwitch telling everyone where to go, and how they'll all be sleeping in one of the larger amphitheaters that night.
Good to know nothing's changed at all.
Ruby goes along with it all somewhat begrudgingly. She's gotten away with sneaking in – accidentally, of course – so far, and she doesn't really want to blow her cover, even if she also very much does want to blow her cover, and try and gather some more information.
She sighs, all of this being just a bit too much for her, even as she finds a corner all to herself, and lays against the wall.
It's an odd mix of loud and quiet in the room, after that. The entire place is abuzz with hushed whispers, occasional bouts of yelling or excitement that are quickly shushed, and just in general the kinds of things that Ruby had long since grown out of.
…Yes, she understands that she is, technically, the same age as all of these people, but quite frankly, she has lived quite a lot more than they have.
Well, maybe not all of them, given there are probably some people here who've gone through their fair share of rough patches, but she's pretty sure in terms of scope, she's got them all beat out, having fought in going-on four battles to determine the fate of the world now.
Briefly, however, as Ruby's eyes scan the crowd ahead of her, she finds herself recognizing someone out of the corner of her eye. She turns, but…
They're gone.
Or, well, not gone, not really. They've probably just laid or sat down, and thusly disappeared from view.
But to Ruby, they might as well be.
She sighs, even as she curls up with Crescent Rose within her arms – huh, them taking their weapons before initiation must've been a more modern thing – and tries to get some sleep.
/
The next morning, Ruby heads to the locker room early.
She does this mostly because she knows she does not have a locker, and so she wants to have some plausible deniability that she'd totally already visited hers, and had simply already finished when the others eventually arrived.
It works, or, well, Ruby thinks it works. She can't really be sure.
Everything is the same as she remembers it being two years ago when she'd attended Beacon. The lockers are a different color, and the technology is evidently a generation or so behind, but it's all there. The paint on the wall is a different shade, but…
Ruby shakes her head.
She can't be… in the past, can she?
It's just… a lot of things would certainly start adding up, if she is. It would explain how Beacon Academy still stood, despite falling. It would explain why the lockers look to be running on older tech, how all the student's scrolls that she'd seen had been far older than hers – heck, why her own scroll has been out of service range, even – and it would explain why Ozpin and Glynda look…
Actually, in all fairness, Ozpin and Ms. Goodwitch both still look exactly the same as they had in her time – if this whole theory about time travel is even correct. Those two had always been kind of ageless in terms of appearance. Team RWBY had once held an impromptu – and not at all professional – meeting to try and guess the ages of the Beacon Academy Staff.
The only one they'd had a solid idea for had been Port.
Still, an awful lot of things are just… they're weird. Too weird to be a coincidence, or at least, that's what her brain's trying to tell her.
…Well, she can think about these things later.
As she pushes off of her locker, she accidentally bumps into another girl, however.
"Ah, sorry," Ruby apologizes, and the girl she'd bumped into, with dark skin and chestnut hair, nods without much emotion at her.
"It's no problem."
She's gone in the next moment, and Ruby sort of awkwardly begins filing towards the exit, waiting on the announcement that will allow them to get out of there, and head out to the Emerald Forest.
Ruby's been thinking about it all morning, and at the moment, her current plan is beginning to solidify into shape. She's going to go along with initiation up until she's landed within the Emerald Forest, and then she's going to hightail it through there to Vale.
When she's there, then… uh…
Well, she hasn't really thought that far ahead yet.
Still, it's something! And that's better than she'd had a couple of hours ago.
So, when Ms. Goodwitch's voice comes on the intercom to let them know to file out, Ruby's the first one to do so. She follows the route she sort of vaguely remembers – and definitely doesn't take a wrong turn, thank you very much! – out onto the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest.
It's a beautiful view. Not quite so much so as Forever Fall, but striking in its own way.
Ruby's smiling, which is quickly dashed by Ozpin passing right in front of her, and clearly investigating her while he thinks she isn't paying attention.
Ruby feels a chill run down her spine, even as she shakes her head, and tries to reason with herself.
If they knew, they'd have arrested me by now or something. I'm fine. They haven't noticed me. Not truly.
Ozpin goes over the basics of a landing strategy, and without a Jaune to have him explain that no, there are no parachutes, it goes remarkably quickly. Ruby smiles at the memory of her friend, and prays that wherever he is – hopefully here with her somewhere, because she could really use the advice, and the friend – he's doing well.
Unfortunately, as she's thinking about other things, Ozpin is finishing his speech, and activating the launch pads that will send them hurtling into the Emerald Forest.
The first of which Ruby is current stood on.
She doesn't even have a second to realize her mistake. One moment she's remembering the first time that she and Jaune had met – heh, vomit boy and crater face, what a pair they'd made – and the next, she's sailing over the Emerald Forest, flipping end over end, screaming rather loudly in surprise.
/
To Ruby's credit, she manages to right herself and land without any real problems.
She's not happy about it, because she's pretty sure she'd just embarrassed the ever-loving crap out of herself, but there'd been no other problems than that.
…Okay, that's not entirely true. As much as Ruby had managed to make it to the ground just fine, she hadn't managed to do so in a manner that had allowed her to keep track of where Vale is relative to her.
Which, y'know, had kind of been her entire plan.
She'd been counting on the launch to be able to catch sight of the city, and to then use that vantage point to plot a sort-of-route there in her head.
She has absolutely no idea which way Vale is.
She could try to climb a tree, but in all honesty, she's not sure she'd get enough height to make anything out, especially with the canyon wall in the way.
No. Unfortunately, it's likely far smarter for Ruby to instead stick to the ground for a while, and perhaps, even, to participate in initiation, despite her concerns.
She sighs, reaching up and rubbing her face with both hands.
Life had seemed to make sense for a while there, right when she'd exited out of the Tree within the Ever After, met the Blacksmith, talked, genuinely, about the kind of person she wanted to be.
And now, yet again, things have become complicated.
It seems they always must.
"Uh, you good?"
Ruby jumps, letting out a squeak as she draws Crescent Rose from off of her back, and deploys it in the direction of the new voice. The boy – and he's just a boy – raises both hands in the air, clearly not having expected consoling a troubled girl to end like this for him.
"W-Woah! Easy!" He chuckles weakly. "E-Easy, really, I come in peace and all that."
Ruby nods her head, sighing. "Sorry, just… got a lot on my mind."
"Yeah, I can uh… I can see that." He coughs, evidently feeling more than a little awkward himself. "So, uh… does this mean we're partners, then?"
It takes Ruby's brain a minute to even process the information that's just been given to her. She'd spent the entire morning thinking specifically about avoiding this, and yet now…
Here she is. Part of Beacon's initiation.
And she's managed to, entirely accidentally, wrangle herself a partner.
Aw, phooey. Ruby mentally lambasts.
"You okay?"
"Er, yeah, I'm fine." Ruby nods her head, trying to display some of her normal enthusiasm, and just not finding it. "Sorry. I'm not trying to be rude, just… dealing with some stuff."
"Oh, yeah, no I get that."
Ruby takes a moment, then, to actually take in his appearance; to get a gauge of her new 'partner'.
The boy in front of her is wearing a ratty white shirt, which has clearly seen better days. He's got long, saggy pants, three belts to hold them onto his hips, and the most bog-standard pair of knives that Ruby has ever seen, very clearly bought from a store meant not for hunting Grimm, but deer or elk.
If she had to guess, he comes from an orphan background. There'd been a few children in similar situations during Ruby's time at Signal, although she'd not met any in quite the same straights during her time in Beacon.
Still, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about him is the shock of red hair atop his head, so warm it's almost orange. Ruby feels like she knows it from somewhere, but again, she can't quite place it beyond that odd familiarity.
Ah, well, there'll be plenty of time for her to figure that out.
…Plenty of time she should've spent, and had been intending to spend, out in the world, looking for the others.
She isn't some member of team… RDDD or something! She's the leader of Team RWBY! She needs to find Weiss, and Blake, and Yang, and Jaune, too! She doesn't have the time to be goofing off at beacon!
And yet, despite her wishes, she's ended up with a partner.
Someone who's relying on her. Someone whose position within Beacon – whose very dreams – now ride on her.
Hah… of course.
Nothing can ever be easy, can it?
Ruby takes a breath, then, before resolving to just… just keep going for the time being. She'll make no big decisions, at least not today. For now, she'll follow along, and do the rest of initiation.
And if she's lucky, nothing big will happen. No one will jump out at her with big fangs and an evil laugh. No figures from her past will show up as little babies that she has to protect. Ozpin won't suddenly call her into his office and decide she's actually incredibly suspicious, and she's under arrest for the rest of her life.
…That would suck.
For now, for this boy's sake, she'll keep going.
"Alright then, partner," she plasters on a fake smile, clears her throat, and extends her hand. "I'm…" Oh, wait, crap, I need a name. Uh… "Yang. Yang Rose…enberg!"
Excellent job, Ruby. They suspect nothing.
"Yang Rosenberg?" The boy laughs, a rich, full thing that seems so very bright. "Helluva name. But then, who am I to judge?"
"Yeah," she laughs awkwardly. "It kind of is."
The boy nods his head, clears his throat, and then gives Ruby a winning smile.
That smile is rogueish, and as he shows it off to her, he points to himself with his thumb.
It is only in that instant of time, just milliseconds before he spells the truth out to her, that Ruby realizes who this is.
And realizes that yes, she truly must be in the past, indeed.
"The name's Roman. Roman Torchwick!"
End Chapter 4
Alright, that's chapter 4!
We've officially got everyone started on their prologue story's... well, Weiss is lagging behind the others a bit, but hers is also going to be a bit on the longer side, so that tracks. Next chapter, we've got Jaune, Blake, and Yang again!
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