Hey guys, RoseSaiyan2 here again. I'm back with another chapter. So I'm undecided if this will be a two parter or not, guess we'll see how the story goes. In regards to the answers on the polls last chapter... seems like I'll be revealing the winner of those polls when the Beacon dance takes place so stay tuned.
As for when Ruby will reveal her feelings (once she figures them out lol) for Nova, I'm thinking probably... around chapter 10 of volume 2. I think that would put it at the mission to Mountain Glenn. I figured that'd be the best timing. Nova I feel like would reveal his own feelings towards Ruby almost immediately after Ruby admits her feelings to him.
Here's a quick poll though:
When should Cinder die?
I. Volume 5 (Confrontation in the Vault)
II. Volume 7 (Atlus; Confrontation with the Saiyans)
III. Volume 7 (Vs. God form Nova)
IV. Volume 5 (Vs. Sala and Raven in the Vault)
V. End of Volume 7 (Confrontation with Beerus)
______________________________________
That's all for now. Onto the story!
P.S.- I don't own Dbz/ Kai/ DBS/DBXV or Rwby and their characters. I only own the OC's. Tarro and Daikon are owned by ComparedDreadx, he's simply given me permission to use them in my stories.
REMNANT'S WARRIORS
A Dragon Ball Z × RWBY Crossover Novel
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Minor Hiccup
Part I — Professor Port's Lecture
Location: Beacon Academy | Classroom 2A | Afternoon
The clock on Weiss Schnee's desk was displaying 3:59, and she had been watching it for the last several minutes with the focused patience of someone who has decided that the most productive use of the available time is waiting for it to end.
Professor Peter Port was at the front of the room, describing something with his hands. He had been describing things with his hands for forty-five minutes, and the descriptions had grown progressively more theatrical without becoming meaningfully more informative. He was now in what appeared to be a dramatic crouch, approximating the posture of some creature he had apparently once fought, and the words coming out of him had the quality of a story that was three times the length it needed to be and had lost its point somewhere around the second act.
Weiss had stopped tracking it approximately twenty minutes ago.
The chair beside her scraped.
She became aware, without looking, of Jaune Arc settling into the adjacent seat with the specific quality of someone who has been working up to something for the duration of the class period and has finally resolved to act.
From the row behind her, she could sense Daikon's attention sharpening into the specific type of focused amusement he reserved for situations that were going to produce a reaction from her. She did not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging this.
Jaune leaned slightly toward her.
"So, Weiss," he began, with the studied casualness of someone reciting from a mental script, "I was thinking — after this, maybe we could grab a bite to eat?"
He glanced at Port, who was mid-charge at an invisible opponent, then back at her.
"And I've got two tickets to that new Spruce Willis film, if you wanted to make the trip to Vale. I hear it's really something."
Nothing from her direction.
He tried a different angle. "And maybe after that, we could study together? I mean, you're smart and I'm, uh..." He seemed to realize that this sentence did not have a flattering completion available and let it drift. "You know."
Behind her, she could feel Daikon conducting a very silent internal countdown. She could also feel him reaching the end of it.
The clock shifted to 4:00.
It beeped.
Weiss dismissed the alarm with a wave of her hand, folded her materials into her bag with the efficient movements of someone who has been planning this exit since minute thirty, and answered without looking at Jaune: "No. No. No. Yes."
She stood.
Jaune processed this. "Did you hear—"
"No to dinner," she said, heading toward the door as Professor Port looked up from his demonstration with the mild surprise of a man who has just noticed the bell has rung. "No to the film. No to studying. Yes, I heard you." She passed him. "You should work on the phrasing."
Jaune's forehead found his desk with the flat finality of an argument that has ended decisively.
Daikon passed him with one hand on his shoulder, not stopping.
"There are other fish in the sea besides the princess," he said, moving on. "You'll figure it out eventually."
Yang ruffled Jaune's hair without breaking stride.
"One day," she said, in the tone of someone who means it as genuine comfort rather than dismissal. "One day, Jaune."
Part II — Gear Up
Location: Team RWBY's Dormitory | Shortly After
The dormitory had the specific quality it acquired when everyone in it was gearing up simultaneously — the sound of clasps and buckles and weapons being checked, the purposeful quiet of people who were about to go somewhere with intent.
Ruby sat on the edge of her bunk and pulled the crimson lacing of her boot tight with the focused attention she gave physical tasks when her mind was elsewhere, which lately it often was. She checked the knot twice. Satisfied.
The room moved around her.
Weiss at the vanity, her hand closing around the handle of Myrtenaster — not drawing it, just confirming its position, the ritual touch of someone verifying a familiar thing. Yang at the window, running the chamber of Ember Celica with the slide-and-snap of a woman who has done this ten thousand times and finds it satisfying. Blake pulling her ribbon wraps tight against her forearms in the method she used that was part armor, part art.
Nova adjusted his bracers at the far side of the room — precise, economical, the way he did most physical things. Beside him, Daikon was working his gloves into position, flexing each hand in sequence. Turuk had his sword on the table and was doing a last check of the strap configuration before swinging it across his back with the easy authority of someone who has worn this particular weight for as long as they can remember. Scarlett was rolling her shoulder armor into place, the padded sections settling against her arms with a sound like controlled impact. Aiko held her naginata at arm's length, running the flat of the blade through a cloth — not because it needed it, but because the motion helped her think.
Blake moved toward her bunk.
"I thought that class would never end," she said.
From her bunk, Ruby straightened. "Alright. Today's the day. The investigation begins."
She launched herself off the mattress with considerably more energy than the task of landing required, hit the floor, and came within approximately eight inches of landing on Weiss, who was on the lower bunk.
"I'm glad to see we're taking this so seriously," Weiss said.
Daikon glanced at her.
She felt the glance. "Not. One. Word."
He smirked. Said nothing. Which was, somehow, more effective.
"We have a plan," Ruby said, pivoting to the room. "That's moderately serious."
"You don't sound very sure about that," Turuk said.
"What do you want me to say?" Yang asked.
"Guys." Nova's voice had the quality it used to end conversations that were moving sideways. "We can circle back to that later. Right now—" He looked at Ruby. "Does everyone remember their role?"
Ruby looked around at the assembled group. "Yeah. Let's go over it."
The roles were distributed with the specific logic of people who had been paying attention to each other's strengths and limitations for long enough to have formed informed opinions.
Weiss straightened. "Daikon and I will go to the CCT and check the Schnee records. Dust robberies, inconsistencies, anything that stands out." She said it with the composure of someone who has accepted an assignment without enthusiasm but fully intends to execute it properly.
Daikon received this without comment. He had learned, over the past several months, which of Weiss's silences meant she was being diplomatic.
"The White Fang holds regular faction meetings," Blake said. "If I can get inside one, I might be able to find out what they're planning."
Scarlett looked at her immediately. "Not alone."
Blake went to argue.
"You know I'm right," Scarlett said.
Blake held the look for a moment, then exhaled. "Fine. Who?"
"Aiko goes with you." Scarlett glanced at her sister. "You can back her up if things go sideways. You're less conspicuous than I am."
Aiko nodded, her expression carrying the specific combination of nervous and determined that characterized her approach to most things that scared her.
Yang was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "I've got a contact. Shady side of Vale, knows everyone, knows everything." She turned slightly. "And Turuk—"
Turuk flinched. He had been expecting this.
"—you still owe me that favor," Yang said, with the specific smile she used when she had already won an argument that hadn't been started yet. "Well?"
"I... sure," he said. "Why not."
"Nova, Ruby, and Scarlett will ask around town," Ruby said, stepping in. "Cover the street-level information. And Yatsuhashi's joining us, which helps."
"Leaves me where?" Sun asked.
The room turned.
Sun Wukong was hanging upside down by his tail from the window frame, a grin on his face and his golden hair doing something impressive given the orientation.
"Sun!" Blake straightened.
"Hey." He waved at her, then at the room generally. "So are we finally going after Torchwick? It's been like a month."
"Almost a month," Turuk said. "More accurately."
"Same difference. Are we doing this or not?"
Nova looked at him with the curious assessment he gave new variables. "How did you get up there?"
"Trees," Sun said. "I climb them all the time."
"You—" Weiss started.
"Physically consistent with his faunus type," Daikon said. "Arboreal adaptation. Shouldn't be surprising, Weiss."
"I wasn't surprised I was—"
"You were about to say something that would've started an argument," Daikon said. "I preempted it."
"That is not—"
"Are you always like this?" Sun asked, looking at Scarlett.
"You get used to it," Scarlett said. "They'll argue, and then he'll say something that makes her laugh whether she wants to or not, and then they'll argue some more. It's a whole thing."
"Uh. Okay."
Sun flipped off the window frame and landed in the room, dusting his hands. "So I'm in, right?"
"We don't want to get more people involved than necessary," Ruby said.
"That's dumb," Sun said, without malice. "More friends is always better than fewer. Which is why I also brought Neptune."
He pointed out the window.
Neptune Vasilias stood on the narrow ledge outside, doing an admirable job of looking casual while his legs communicated something entirely different.
"S-sup," he said.
Nova raised an eyebrow.
"How did he get up there?" Ruby asked.
"He has his ways," Sun said.
"Seriously, though," Neptune said, "can I come in? We're very high up and I would really like to be inside a building right now."
Ruby looked at Nova. He nodded.
"Come on in," she said.
Neptune climbed through the window with the specific dignity of someone grateful to be on a surface that did not require balance, and the room began its final configuration.
The assignment of Neptune and the rearrangement that followed had the quality of a negotiation that Ruby presided over with cheerful firmness and Weiss attempted to redirect twice, both times unsuccessfully.
"Weiss, I'll go with Nova and Scarlett," Ruby said. "Neptune, you go with Yang. She and Turuk might need an extra pair of eyes."
She nudged Neptune gently toward Yang with the efficiency of someone herding a slightly confused sheep.
Neptune, passing Weiss, deployed a wink and a smile that was technically a single gesture and subjectively three.
Weiss blinked. Processed. Recovered.
"Actually, Ruby," she said, with the measured tone of someone who has identified an alternative arrangement, "why don't you go with Yang? She is your sister—"
"She doesn't want to be a third wheel," Daikon said. "Read the room, princess."
Weiss looked at Yang. Then at Turuk. Then at the specific quality of whatever was developing between those two, which even from a distance had a texture she was beginning to recognize.
She closed her argument.
"Come on," Daikon said, turning for the door. His hand found Weiss's wrist and pulled, not forcefully — the pull of someone who is confident the person will follow and is simply providing a direction. "Princess."
Weiss stuck her free arm backward in the direction of Neptune, who was approximately one second too late to do anything useful about it.
"But—" she started.
"But—" she continued, as the corridor consumed them.
The door swung.
Ruby turned to Nova and Scarlett, who were looking at the place the two had been standing with varying expressions of amusement.
"Alright," Ruby said. "We should get going too."
"Agreed," Nova said. He looked at her briefly with the expression he used when he was specifically pleased about something, which she had been cataloguing for a year and still found impossible to be neutral about.
"Alright, lovebirds," Scarlett said, walking past them. "Save the eye contact for later. We've got a city to canvass."
"Scarlett," Ruby said, with feeling.
"You're welcome," Scarlett said, already in the hallway.
Ruby and Nova followed, and neither of them said anything else about it, which did not mean neither of them was thinking about it.
Part III — The CCT
Location: The Cross-Continental Transmit Tower, Vale | That Afternoon
The tower rose above the surrounding buildings with the quiet authority of something that had been important for long enough to stop needing to announce it. Daikon stood in front of it with his hands in his pockets and looked up.
"So this is it up close," he said. "I've seen it from a distance."
"You've never been inside?" Weiss asked.
"Never had a reason to before today." He looked at the architecture — the engineering of it, the specific ambition it represented, the layers of infrastructure that had gone into making the kingdoms capable of talking to each other at all. "Atlas built the first one."
"After the Great War," Weiss said, with the particular tone of someone who learned this young enough that it stopped feeling like information and started feeling like context. "The CCT was Atlas's contribution to the world. The gift that made everything else possible." She paused. "My family's company was involved in the early funding."
"The Schnee Dust Company was involved in most things that required significant power in the past hundred years," Daikon said. He said it without particular edge — just the flat acknowledgment of a fact.
Weiss looked at him sideways.
"That wasn't a criticism," he said.
"It sounded like the beginning of one."
"It was an observation." He started walking toward the entrance. "Come on, princess. You've got records to access."
"Stop—"
"I know." He held the door.
She walked through it.
The lobby was vast in the way that things built to communicate grandeur are vast — high ceilings, the ambient hum of technology operating at scale, the cool particular air of a building that takes its climate control seriously. Weiss moved through it with the unconscious authority of someone who has never walked into a room unsure of whether she belonged there.
Daikon walked beside her and was quietly, privately, entertained by this.
It wasn't arrogance, exactly. He had been watching Weiss long enough now to understand the distinction. The way she carried herself in spaces like this wasn't the performance of superiority — it was the ingrained posture of someone who had grown up in rooms like this one and had been taught, by repetition rather than instruction, that confidence was the appropriate default. She couldn't help it. She'd been shaped by it.
What made it interesting was the way she was also, very slowly, becoming aware of her own shape.
The elevator opened to the communications floor, and Weiss presented her scroll at the AI terminal, and the response was the specific warmth of a system that had been programmed to recognize important names.
Perfect. Thank you, Miss Schnee.
The terminal level opened to the communications room — four kingdom symbols on the monitor array, the holographic secretary at the desk, the soft continuous sound of a facility working.
Weiss requested a call to Schnee Company World Headquarters in Atlas, and something in her expression changed when she said it. Not much — not enough that a stranger would notice. But Daikon noticed, because he had been paying close enough attention to Weiss Schnee for long enough that the difference between her real face and her performing face had become legible to him.
She was dreading this.
He said nothing yet. There was a time for things.
The Schnee Company operator recognized Weiss immediately, with the warmth of someone for whom this name was both familiar and professionally significant.
"Oh! Miss Schnee! Good afternoon! Shall I patch you through to your father? Your sister Winter might be available as well—"
"No, thank you." The smile was professional and immediate and entirely false. "I have a list of files I need transferred. I'll send it through now."
The data went. The operator reviewed it. She became slightly uncomfortable in the way that people become uncomfortable when they've been asked for something they're not sure they're supposed to provide.
"Some of these are sensitive documents, ma'am—"
"I'll treat them with care," Weiss said.
"...Of course. Transferring now."
"Wonderful. That will be all."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like me to connect you with your father before—"
"Yes," Weiss said. "I'm sure."
The call ended.
The room held a specific silence — the silence of a screen that had gone dark and a girl who was looking at it with an expression she had not yet rearranged into something more manageable. In the screen's reflection, Daikon could see her face clearly.
He put a hand on her shoulder.
She started slightly, then didn't move away.
"I don't know the specifics of whatever's between you and your father," he said. "And you don't have to tell me. But that expression—" He paused. "It doesn't suit you. You're not this defeated."
A silence.
"Thank you," she said. Quietly. Meaning it.
"Don't make a thing of it," he said, removing his hand. "Come on. We've got data to look through, and somewhere in the city there's a big robot that Ruby is definitely going to get distracted by."
Weiss almost laughed.
He caught the edge of it and filed it away.
Part IV — A Familiar Face
Location: The Streets of Vale | That Afternoon
Ruby had been managing her scroll with the focused attention of someone who was navigating and having a conversation simultaneously, which was two things she could do fine individually and slightly less fine together.
The result was that when the scroll slipped, it was not entirely unexpected.
What was unexpected was where it landed.
Specifically: at the feet of a copper-haired girl with green eyes and an expression that shifted from startled to something more complex in approximately a second and a half.
The girl reached down and picked it up with the neat efficiency of someone who moved with precision. She held it out.
"You dropped this."
Ruby looked up.
Then she looked harder.
"Penny?"
The name produced, in the girl holding the scroll, the specific reaction of someone who had been hoping not to be recognized and has just discovered that hope was misplaced.
"I — sorry, I think you're confused—"
"Penny, where have you been? We haven't seen you since the docks! That was weeks ago—"
"I'm not—" Penny hiccupped. The scroll launched itself from her hand into Ruby's. "I've got to go—"
She turned. Started walking with the brisk purposefulness of someone executing a departure before it could be argued with.
Nova appeared at Ruby's shoulder. "What just happened?"
"That was Penny," Ruby said, already moving.
He caught her wrist.
She turned, already pulling. "Nova, I have to—"
"I know," he said. "And you're going." He held her gaze. "On one condition."
She stilled.
"I come with you," he said. "I'm not letting you go after her alone in a city where someone has already tried to shoot at you once this week."
She held his gaze. Measured the expression in it — not controlling, not cautionary, just the specific look of someone who has decided where they stand on a thing and is stating it plainly.
"Fine," she said. "Come on."
They caught up to Penny at the edge of a smaller plaza — Ruby stepping around in front of her, Nova coming in from the side, not blocking so much as surrounding with the presence of people who very much intended to have this conversation.
"Penny." Ruby's voice had the quality it had when she was worried and was not going to pretend otherwise. "Where have you been? We were terrified after the docks. You just disappeared—"
"It's a misunderstanding—" Penny hiccupped.
"Penny, please. Something big is happening. The people at the docks — Torchwick, the White Fang, all of it — and you know something. I need you to tell me." Ruby's hand found Penny's arm. "Not as a huntress, not because I need information. As your friend. Please."
Penny stilled.
She looked at Ruby's face for a moment, and then at Nova's, and then at the space between them that was specifically not confrontational but was very definitely here and not going anywhere.
"It isn't safe to talk here," she said, finally. "Come with me."
Part V — What Penny Is
They walked until the foot traffic thinned, and then Penny stopped with the specific behavior of someone checking their exits, and then she looked at both of them with the expression of someone making a decision they've been putting off.
"I wish I could help you," she said. "But I genuinely don't know anything about those men."
"Then what happened to you? Why did you disappear? Were you—"
"Ruby." Nova's voice was gentle but precise. "One at a time."
"Right. Sorry." She took a breath. "What happened to you after the fight?"
"I was... asked to leave. To not talk to anyone. From Beacon." Penny looked at the ground. "My father worries. He asked me not to venture too far. I should have listened."
"Is that why you ran when you saw us?"
"No." She looked away. "I was told not to. By someone else." She paused. "It wasn't my father."
Nova spoke, quietly. "Penny."
She looked at him.
"General Ironwood," he said.
Penny's expression told him what he needed to know before she had to answer.
The holographic demonstration playing on a platform they'd passed was still audible in the distance — Ironwood's voice on a recording, explaining the new Atlesian Knight-200s, the crowd responding. Penny heard it and became perceptibly anxious.
"Maybe we should go somewhere else," she said.
Before anyone could respond, two soldiers at the edge of the demonstration plaza had spotted her. Penny's eyes went wide.
She ran.
Nova looked at Ruby for exactly one second.
"Go," he said.
What followed was the specific chaos of a chase through a city that is not designed to accommodate someone running at full speed, pursued by soldiers who are, and followed by two people moving through it in entirely different ways.
Ruby cleared the crate obstruction with Crescent Rose and caught up to Penny at the alley's end, grabbing her around the middle, and both of them disappeared in a scatter of rose petals and forward motion that ended two blocks away with a crash and a dizzy landing.
Ruby got up.
The truck came from behind and to the left, and she did not have time to process the horn.
Penny moved.
And then Nova was there.
He took the impact of the truck with his hands, his feet cracking the pavement beneath him as the vehicle's momentum transferred into the ground rather than into the girl in the red hood. The truck lifted slightly. He set it back down with the complete composure of someone returning a book to a shelf.
The shopkeeper behind the wheel was making a sound that was not a word.
Ruby stared.
"Nova?"
He turned. Checked her, then Penny, then himself — all present, all intact — and let out a slow breath.
"Don't look at me like that," he said.
"You just—"
"Stopped a truck, yes." He moved them away from the street. "We can talk about it in a minute."
Penny was looking between them with the expression of someone who has had something confirmed.
Then she started backing away, and the soldiers behind them had rounded the corner, and Ruby grabbed her hand before she could bolt again.
"Penny. Whatever you are — whatever you're running from — you don't have to face it alone. That's what friends are for."
"You promise you're my friends?" Penny asked. It was not a casual question.
"We promise," Ruby said.
Nova nodded.
Penny looked at both of them for a moment. Then, quietly: "Alright. Ruby. Nova. I'm not a real girl."
Ruby looked at Nova.
Nova did not look surprised.
"You knew," Ruby said.
"I suspected," he said. "Professor Koizumi confirmed it a while ago." He looked at Penny. "You're an Android. Correct?"
Penny's eyes went wide. "How—"
"The processing delay in your responses," he said. "The way my ki sense couldn't find you when you left the docks. The fighting we saw that night." He paused. "You're Penny Polendina. And I'm guessing Professor Polendina built you."
"An android?" Ruby said.
"Constructed intelligence," Nova said. "Built rather than born. Designed to present as human." He glanced at Ruby. "I told you. A while back."
"You told me in the most casual way possible—"
"I told you correctly."
Penny, watching this exchange, extended her palms toward Ruby.
The metal was visible where the debris from Nova's intervention had marked the surface.
Ruby looked at Penny's hands. Then at Penny's face.
"Oh," Ruby said.
She took a breath.
She reached out and took Penny's metal hands in her own.
"Just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy bits doesn't make you any less real than me," she said. "You have a heart. I can feel it."
"You're taking this extraordinarily well," Penny said, in wonder.
"I have a very good teacher," Ruby said, glancing at Nova.
Penny grabbed her in a hug that had slightly more structural force than was comfortable.
Nova stepped aside and gave them a moment. He walked a short distance, watching the street, and thought about the other thing — the question Ruby had not yet asked but was going to.
How did you stop the truck?
What are you?
Professor Koizumi said you're something called a Saiyan.
He didn't know how to answer that yet. He knew the word now — Tarro had given it to him, had explained the outline of it, the history that had been kept from him since before he could remember. He understood, in broad strokes, what it meant. What he didn't know yet was what to do with it. How to say it out loud to someone who didn't have the context for it.
To someone like Ruby, who was standing ten feet away and who deserved the true version of things.
Soon, he thought. I need to tell her properly. When I understand it properly myself.
He turned back.
Penny explained her father, and Ironwood, and the soldiers who followed her everywhere, and why she had come to the festival, and what she hoped to do here.
"One day," she said, "it will be my job to save the world. But I still have a lot to learn. That's why my father let me come — to see what the world is like outside Atlas, and to test myself in the Tournament."
"Save the world from what?" Ruby asked. "We're in a time of peace."
"Are we?" Nova said, quietly, to the street.
Ruby looked at him. The specific quality of concern she turned toward him was something he noticed and was not unaffected by.
"I get the feeling something is coming," he said. "Something that won't wait for any of us to be ready."
The soldiers arrived at the alley entrance before Penny could respond to this.
She looked at Ruby and Nova and smiled — a genuine, full smile, the kind that required a face capable of meaning it.
"Hide," she said. "I'll handle them. And Ruby — don't tell anyone. Please."
"I promise," Ruby said.
"Your secret is safe," Nova confirmed.
Penny curtsied at them, and Nova pulled Ruby behind a dumpster with the efficiency of someone who has decided to commit to the bit, and they listened from inside it as Penny greeted the soldiers with a hiccup and a salutation and led them cheerfully away.
Ruby, in the dark, said: "This is undignified."
"It is," Nova agreed.
A rat crossed the dumpster floor.
Ruby made a sound and fell backward and Nova caught her, again, and they emerged into the alley with Ruby in his arms and her face doing something that was simultaneously embarrassed and amused.
He set her on her feet.
She smoothed her cape.
"She'll be alright," he said.
"I know," she said. And then, looking at him sideways: "Are you alright? You seemed..." She searched for the word. "Far away, for a moment."
He thought about what to say.
"There are things I'm still figuring out," he said. "About what I am. About where I come from." He paused. "I'll tell you properly when I understand it properly. Is that—"
"That's fine," she said. "Take your time."
She said it with the simplicity of someone who means it entirely, and he looked at her and thought that this was perhaps one of the most Ruby Rose things she had ever done, which was a high bar, and he appreciated it more than he was currently in a position to say.
They walked back to find the others.
Part VI — Junior's
Location: Junior's Club, Vale | That Afternoon
Yang Xiao Long's relationship with Junior's establishment was, by anyone's measure, complicated.
Junior himself had the expression of a man who has identified an approaching situation and is in the process of evaluating his options when the door came off its hinges and the familiar blonde walked in through the smoke with the specific energy of someone who has been looking forward to this.
"Guess who's back," Yang said.
Behind her, Turuk Belladonna looked at the eight firearms that had appeared in his immediate vicinity and performed a rapid assessment of the room that landed somewhere between this is not ideal and I can work with this.
Neptune, behind Turuk, said, very quietly: "Could you define friend for me?"
"Put those down," Junior said, to his people. He made his way to the front, because the alternative was letting things escalate, and things escalating around Yang Xiao Long had a specific outcome that he was personally familiar with. "Blondie. Why."
"You still owe me a drink," Yang said, dragging him toward the bar.
Neptune whistled, in the specific way of someone who has identified something impressive.
"Whoa," he said, watching Yang go. "What a woman—"
"Back off," Turuk said.
The words came out before he had finished deciding to say them. He registered this. Neptune looked at him with the specific expression of someone recalibrating their assessment of a situation.
"Okay," Neptune said, raising his hands. "Didn't know she was taken. My bad."
"She's not—" Turuk stopped.
Wasn't she?
He was not sure why that question did not have an obvious answer. He followed Yang toward the bar and spent the walk trying to determine when exactly Yang Xiao Long and not available had become the same thought, and whether that was a decision he had made or a conclusion he had arrived at.
The answer, he suspected, was both. He just wasn't certain of the timing.
Junior, behind the bar, maintained his position. "I don't know anything."
"You know something," Yang said.
"Torchwick hired my men. Paid up front. None of them came back." He leaned over the bar. "And before you ask — no, I don't know where he went. I haven't spoken to him since the night you first showed up here."
"Where did his operation move to?" Turuk asked.
"I told you, I don't—"
"Where?" Yang's voice had acquired an edge.
Turuk put a hand briefly on her shoulder. Not to stop her — just to anchor the moment.
"Easy," he said. "We've got what we need."
Yang looked at him. The edge softened, fractionally.
"Maybe," she said. Then, to Junior: "We'll be in touch."
She turned. He followed. Neptune brought up the rear.
Outside, in the afternoon light, Yang exhaled.
"Nothing concrete," Neptune said.
"No." She rolled her shoulder. "Hopefully the others are doing better." She looked at Turuk. "Nice save in there."
"You were going to break something expensive," he said.
"Probably." She smiled at him — the real one, the one behind the performance of it. "Thanks."
He looked at her.
The thought he'd been not-thinking for three months arrived with the specific certainty of something that has been waiting patiently and has decided its time has come:
I have no idea how to feel about Yang Xiao Long and I think that means I know exactly how I feel about Yang Xiao Long and I am not ready for that.
"Let's see what the others found," he said.
Part VII — The Meeting
Location: A White Fang Warehouse, Vale | That Evening
Blake had not been inside a White Fang meeting in years.
The architecture of it was familiar in the specific way that things are familiar when you've spent enough of your formative years inside them — the layout of assembled bodies, the specific weight of the crowd's attention, the smell of gathered purpose. She moved through the recruitment line with the muscle memory of someone who had done this many times in a different life.
Sun was beside her, managing his level of conspicuousness with varying success.
Aiko was above them, on the rooftop, and her voice came through the mental link they'd established earlier with the careful enunciation of someone who is not sure how loud to be in someone else's head.
I can see the whole floor from here. You're near the third column from the stage.
Correct, Blake said through the link. Stay in position.
The stage at the front of the room held a banner — the bloody wolf, teeth bared, the image she had watched replace the gentle-eyed one when she was still young enough to have believed in the first one. She looked at it without feeling, which was its own kind of feeling.
The Lieutenant was speaking, and then the figure he introduced walked out, and Blake's jaw tightened behind her mask.
Roman Torchwick.
In a White Fang meeting.
Smiling.
"That's a human," a faunus woman near Blake said, with the barely-contained fury of someone whose entire movement was predicated on the idea that this was the enemy.
"I know," Blake thought, to nobody.
Roman waited out the initial protest with the patience of someone who knew the punchline and was watching the room arrive at it. He walked through his argument — you and I have a common enemy, the ones in control, the people pulling the strings — and the crowd shifted with it, the way crowds shift when someone has identified their anger and given it a direction.
The curtain fell.
The Atlesian Paladin stood behind it.
That's— Aiko's voice in the link had gone very quiet. That's a military-grade mech. How did Torchwick get that?
Stolen, Blake thought back. He said someone gave it to him.
"Someone?" Sun murmured beside her. "Like who?"
Like Cinder, Blake thought, though she didn't say it. Like whoever is behind all of this.
The applause was reaching its crescendo when Roman's eyes moved across the crowd with the professional attention of someone who looks for things that are out of place, and found them.
"He sees us," Sun said.
"Not for long." Blake looked up toward the roof. Now, Aiko.
R-right.
Silence.
Then a crack of impact, and the lights went out.
Blake grabbed Sun's wrist and ran.
The exit was not elegant but it was effective. Aiko's crossbow bolt had found the fuse box with the precision of someone who had been aiming for considerably longer than it looked, and the darkness bought them thirty seconds of confusion that Blake converted into distance with the muscle memory of someone who has run from things before and learned to run toward exits rather than away from walls.
They came out through the window Aiko had cleared, onto the highway, with the Paladin's mechanical footsteps announcing that Roman's patience for dignified retreats had expired.
The radio call went out in three directions.
Part VIII — The Road
Location: Vale Highway | That Evening
The Paladin was faster than it looked, which was a fact that became relevant approximately forty seconds into the rooftop-to-highway transition.
Blake, Sun, and Aiko ran.
The mech followed, with the particular relentlessness of several tons of war machinery operating under the direction of someone who was annoyed.
"Some form of backup," Sun said, between rooftop jumps, "would be extremely welcome right now—"
Blake was already on the scroll. "Everyone. If you can hear me—"
"HEEELLLP," Sun contributed, helpfully, in the background.
The responses came in sequence.
Weiss and Daikon, from the CCT — she was already running when she picked up. Daikon was a half-step behind her, which Ruby would have recognized as him following rather than leading, which was its own form of information.
Nova and Ruby, from wherever they'd been — Nova's voice: We heard it. On our way. Ruby's, overlapping: I am not missing this—
Yang, from the direction of the club — the sound of a motorcycle engine, Turuk's voice in the background, Neptune yelping about the speed.
Scarlett and Yatsuhashi, from their search — Scarlett's voice was already moving.
The Paladin had Roman in the cockpit and several tons of objections to being outmaneuvered by teenagers, and it was expressing both of these things comprehensively.
Yang and Turuk arrived first, the motorcycle cutting along the highway in the mech's blind spot.
Turuk didn't announce himself. He leapt from the bike, struck the mech's side with both fists at full commitment, felt it stagger, and was back on the bike before the cockpit could reorient.
"Was that wise?" Yang asked.
"Probably not," he said. "Did it help?"
"A little."
Neptune, from behind them, had produced his weapon and was proving considerably more useful than his general affect suggested.
They worked in sequence — Neptune buying time, Yang buying more, Turuk providing the punctuation, all three of them managing the mech's attention while the others arrived.
Weiss came in from the east with Myrtenaster already deployed, her ice circle spreading across the pavement with the specific elegance of someone who has practiced this until it requires no thought. The Paladin hit it and lost its footing, and Daikon was moving the moment it stumbled — a single, precise kick that used the mech's own off-balance momentum to send it further sideways.
He landed and looked at Weiss.
"Your team," he said.
She returned the smirk with compound interest. Then she ran.
The highway reorganized around Team RWBY, who met it in the formation that four months of Beacon and a shared year of becoming a team had given them — Ruby calling the combination attacks by names they'd developed themselves, Blake moving in the spaces between the others' moments, Yang closing in with the fire-and-impact that was her specific language, Weiss providing the architecture that let everyone else's violence be surgical.
Scarlett and Yatsuhashi worked the perimeter — Scarlett with the contained ki-blast that split the pavement in a line and Yatsuhashi with his sword finding structural weak points with the patience of someone who has learned that the right place matters more than the first place.
Nova and Ruby traded the middle — Ruby running the mech's attention while Nova covered the angles it created, and then reversing when the mech oriented, a game of geometry played at speed.
It was, taken as a whole, the specific kind of controlled chaos that qualified, from a certain angle, as beautiful.
Yang's power was building.
The blow that sent her through the column was Roman's best attempt, and it was a genuine one — the Paladin's remaining arm at full extension, the force of it comprehensively delivered. She went through the pillar and did not come up immediately.
Turuk moved.
He didn't think about it. His ki was already igniting before his brain had finished the sentence, and he was in motion — toward the mech, toward the place where it had turned to confirm its victory, his fist coming back with the specific weight of someone who has made a decision about how much to commit.
Yang stood up.
Her hair was fire. Her eyes were red. Roman, inside the cockpit, had time to register that his calculation had been wrong.
Both fists arrived simultaneously — Yang's from the ground, Turuk's from the air — and the Paladin's structural integrity, which had been comprehensive at the start of the fight, was not comprehensive anymore.
The explosion was loud.
Roman came out of it on the pavement with the look of a man who has revised his schedule.
Turuk landed between him and Yang. He had not been asked to do this. He did it anyway.
Nova and his team watched from the sides.
"Rule one," Daikon said. "Don't make either of those two angry."
"There are days," Scarlett said, "when I'm genuinely glad they're on our side."
Roman was recovering with the specific resilience of someone who has survived many things and has developed a philosophical relationship with getting back up. He looked at Turuk. At the power still evident in the posture. At Yang behind him.
He was saved by a girl who arrived from the shadows — small, two-toned, moving with the complete self-possession of someone who goes exactly where she intends to go — and absorbed the remaining force of Turuk's follow-up strike with a weapon that folded the energy into something it could contain.
The force was more than she had prepared for.
She slid back. Her eyes were wide for a fraction of a second. Then composed.
Roman addressed the assembled group with the theatrical courtesy of a man who has run out of other options.
"Ladies. Gentlemen. Ice Queen."
"Hey," Weiss said.
"Neo, if you would—"
The image of the two shattered like glass.
They were gone before anyone reached the place they'd been.
Part IX — Aftermath
The highway settled into the specific quiet of a place that has been very loud for a sustained period and is now catching its breath. Seventeen people were standing in various configurations of aftermath — some checking weapons, some checking themselves, some looking at the damage the Paladin had done to the surrounding infrastructure before becoming the damage itself.
Scarlett looked at what remained of the mech. "Well," she said. "That happened."
"Guess he got a new henchman," Yang said.
"Yeah, I guess she really made our plans..." Weiss said, searching for something. "...fall apart."
The silence that followed this was the specific silence that follows an attempted joke that has not quite landed in the way intended.
"Right," Nova said.
"Okay," Yang said. "We have a time and a place conversation to have later."
"That wasn't—"
"I know what you were trying to do. The timing was just—"
"I know."
Daikon made a sound that was technically nothing.
Weiss looked at him with the precise glare she had developed specifically for this category of response from him. "If you say one word—"
"Real smooth," he said. "That's two words, though. Technically."
"You—"
"The jokes will be funny eventually," he said. "I believe in you, princess."
"I have never been so—"
"Come on," Turuk said, not entirely unlike how Nova used the same words in similar situations. "Let's go find the others."
They went.
Ruby, walking beside Nova toward the back of the group, looked around at the diminished configuration.
"Where are Sun and Neptune?" she asked.
Nova looked at her. Then he reached over and ruffled her hair.
She puffed her cheeks out at him.
He smiled — the real one. "They're fine. Trust me."
Two blocks away, Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasilias sat at the counter of a noodle house that had the specific quality of a place that had decided, as a matter of policy, not to comment on the sounds of battle in the middle distance.
The noodles were very good.
"They're probably fine," Neptune said.
"Probably," Sun agreed.
They ate.
"They have like, four of the strongest people I've ever met between them," Sun said.
"Also true."
A comfortable pause.
"We should probably check in," Neptune offered.
"Probably," Sun agreed.
The noodles continued to be very good.
Outside, Vale was resuming the ordinary business of a city that has decided to move on from the noise, and the festival lights were starting to come on in the early evening, and somewhere in the direction of Beacon Academy, a large and varied group of young people were walking back the way they came, carrying with them various amounts of new information and various degrees of undeclared feeling, most of which would sort itself out in time.
Most of it.
★ END OF CHAPTER TWELVE ★
Next: Chapter Thirteen — "A Shocking Revelation?"
Aaaaaaannnndddd done! Whew! That was a long chapter! This chapter covered 2 episodes (episodes 3 & 4 of volume 2) so expect that to be the norm for this story. Anyways, as you noticed Turuk and Yang are starting to grow abit closer to actually becoming a couple- ish lol.
Also, I figured some more development with Weiss x Daikon, and Scarlett x Yatsuhashi couldn't hurt either... same with Nova x Ruby. Next couple of chapter should be fun as they focus abit more on Blake specifically. There may be a surprise in store for you guys in the next few chapters. And don't worry I'll tie up that loose end between Yang and Turuk from a few chapters ago when Turuk said he'd make it up to Yang for making her mad.
I'll branch of a little from the main story as it gets closer to the end of volume 3 though. And as I said, overall direction of the story will somewhat follow Rwby cannon but will be abit different since there are saiyans around lol. Now a poll!
Should Pyrrha die at the fall of beacon?
A. Yes.
B. No, go in a different direction
Who should grow a beard during the tile skip after Beacon's Fall?
A. Turuk
B. Nova and Turuk
C. Nova, Turuk, and Daikon
D. All of the important male Characters
Who do you think will gain access to Super Saiyan first?
I. Nova
II. Turuk
III. Daikon
IV. Scarlett
V. Aiko
That's all for now guys! Thanks for reading and see ya in the next update!