Hey guys, Rosesaiyan2 here again! Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the last chapter that was posted. I'm going to introduce a new section called Q & A either at the beginning or at the end of each chapter.
As I've said before, the dark elves really don't like humans in this story due to how inhumanly they've been treated. That said, they're not against working with them on occasion. If you all are wondering, yes. Cinder and Salem have pretty large roles in why the dark elves are so horrifically treated by humans. So you can imagine when the Elves discover those two, they'll be out for blood.
Anyways, that's mainly all for now. Onto the story!
Disclaimer: Rosesaiyan2 (wattpad)/ Novaflame6_Badal (webnovel)/Novablade67 (Fanfiction.net) doesn't own Dbz/DBS, Black Clover, or Rwby and their characters. Those belong to Akira Toriyama/Toei Animation, Yuki Tabata/Studio Pierot and Rooster Teeth/Monty Oum respectively. He only owns the OC's aside from Tarro and Daikon, which he has permission to use via ComparedDreadx.
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Opening: Rising Hope (Irregular at Magic Highschool)
Visuals: Swap the characters in the opening for the characters in this story.. same with the world.
Chapter Nine: Welcome to Beacon — Reunion
The city of Vale had a particular quality in the days before the Vytal Festival that it did not have at any other time of year — a quality of anticipation that had become architectural, woven into the bunting on the lamp posts and the fresh paint on the market signs and the particular way that strangers moved through the streets with less of the private, inward focus of daily life and more of the open attention of people who have come somewhere for a reason that is not entirely practical.
It was, Berethon Albanar reflected, a beautiful city when it tried.
He walked beside his wife through the outer streets that curved toward the academy's grounds, with the unhurried pace of someone who has learned that hurrying accomplishes less than people believe it does. Two of his aides walked ahead and behind — Valvedern in his crimson armor, with the controlled alertness of a supreme general who is twenty years old and takes this very seriously, and Zero in the deep green of the Vanguard, quieter than his brother and no less watchful.
Berethon had not told them to walk in formation. They had organized themselves this way because this was simply how they moved when their sovereigns were in public, and they had been doing it long enough that it had become the natural shape of the group.
He found, as he often found in the presence of young people who had committed themselves to something larger than their own comfort, that it produced in him a feeling he did not have a precise word for. Pride was adjacent to it. Gratitude was closer. The particular quality of feeling that comes from watching someone be exactly what they were made to be, which is both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.
"Do you think they're well?" Hyatan asked, beside him.
"Sybyrh's reports have been positive. I trust her assessment."
"Her assessment is professional," Hyatan said. "I'm asking about the other kind of well."
He considered this. "I think," he said, "that they are doing what we hoped they would do, which is learning things we couldn't teach them and making connections we couldn't arrange. Whether it is comfortable — probably not always." He glanced at her. "That was rather the point, wasn't it?"
She made a small sound that was not quite agreement and not quite disagreement, which was how she responded to things he said that were right and that she had her own feelings about regardless.
He looked up.
The ships were the first thing that registered — not one or two, but a fleet, the Atlesian configuration as recognizable to him as a family crest, the organized, deliberate military presence of someone who had decided that sufficient force deployed visibly was its own form of argument.
He sighed through his nose.
"James," he said.
"James," Hyatan confirmed.
"He has always—"
"Yes."
"Even when we were young, he had this—"
"Yes, dear."
Valvedern spoke from ahead of them, carefully. "Will this be a problem, your Majesties?"
Hyatan answered before Berethon could. "Not a problem. A conversation that needed to happen eventually and has now been moved to the schedule without our input." She looked at Berethon. "We should go to the school first."
"The boys can wait a few hours," he agreed.
"They have waited this long."
"They have." He resumed walking. "It will mean something more, I think, when we see them in their new place. After whatever James has to say."
Zero, quiet until now, offered from his position: "Shall I send word ahead to Captain Sybyrh?"
"She'll know we're coming," Hyatan said. "She always does."
Beacon Academy — the headmaster's office
The office at the top of Beacon's tower had, at this moment, four occupants in addition to Ozpin, which was more than it typically held comfortably, though the room itself seemed to accommodate this without objection.
Glynda stood near the window with the expression she wore when she was managing her response to something. Sybyrh stood near the door with the particular stillness of someone who has been trained to hold a position indefinitely and is doing so without self-consciousness. Tarro sat in one of the chairs that Ozpin had indicated with the comfortable alertness of someone accustomed to situations where the social dynamics are still being established.
Sybyrh was watching the ships.
"The general makes his presence known," she said, more to herself than to the room.
"James loves Vale this time of year," Ozpin said, which was not an explanation but was the shape of one.
"He loves bringing an army to Vale," Sybyrh said.
"He doesn't see a distinction," Glynda said, with the particular dryness of someone who has been having versions of this conversation for a long time.
Sybyrh considered this. "My people also once had leaders who did not see the distinction," she said. "They did not last long. The people lost faith in them, because force applied where judgment should have been used teaches the population that force is all their leaders have." She looked at the window. "It is a useful lesson. Unfortunately, it tends to be expensive in the learning."
Tarro was watching her. "That's a very settled way to think about it," he said. "For someone our age."
"I was raised by a general," Sybyrh said. "The lessons came early."
He nodded, in the manner of someone filing this.
"The general is a good man," Ozpin said, and he said it with the particular quality of someone who means something specific and complicated by good. "He is afraid. People who are afraid and who have the means to do something about the fear tend to do too much rather than too little. This is a very human tendency."
"It is not exclusive to humans," Sybyrh said. "But yes."
Ozpin looked at her. "Your restraint is appreciated, Sybyrh. More than you know."
"You asked me to hear him out," she said. "I will hear him out. That is the extent of what I am committing to."
"That," Ozpin said, "is entirely sufficient."
The access chime sounded.
Ironwood came through the door with the energy of a man who has traveled a long way and considers the distance a reasonable investment. He was broader than Ozpin, with the bearing of someone who had spent his formative years deciding that his body was primarily a tool rather than a presence, and had built it accordingly. His eyes moved across the room with the rapid, assessing quality of someone for whom entering spaces and immediately knowing who is in them is simply how attention works.
They settled on Tarro. Then on Sybyrh. Then on Ozpin.
"Ozpin." He came forward, hand extended.
"James." The handshake was the handshake of two people who had known each other long enough for formality to have been replaced by something that was either warmth or habit, and was probably both.
When the introductions were done, Ironwood looked at Sybyrh with the particular quality of someone who has encountered something they were told to be prepared for and is in the process of being prepared.
"You're Arkynorean," he said.
"I am," she said.
"Are you—" He stopped, and the stopping was more careful than the starting had been.
"Angry with you specifically?" she said. "No. Cautious in the general sense, with human beings as a category? Yes. I ask you to take no offense at this — it is not personal. We have simply been given a great deal of occasion to be cautious."
"I understand that."
"I hope so," she said, and the hope in the word was genuine, which made it more pointed than if it had been a challenge. "I genuinely hope so, General. For both our peoples' sakes."
Ironwood looked at her for a moment longer. Then he nodded, with the specific quality of someone who has decided to take something seriously.
He turned to Ozpin.
"I know what it looks like," he said, gesturing at the window. "But you know why I'm here. Qrow's reports—"
"I know what Qrow's reports say," Ozpin said. He set his mug down. "I also know that a fleet outside the window of a festival city is a different message to the public than it is to you."
"The public isn't my primary concern right now."
"It should be," Sybyrh said, and then, when Ironwood looked at her: "Forgive me. I said I would hear you out. I will continue to hear you out."
He looked at her for a moment. "You're very direct."
"My people find indirection inefficient," she said. "I was attempting to be polite."
Something moved in Ironwood's expression that might, in another context, have been the beginning of a smile. "I'll keep that in mind." He turned back to Ozpin. "The point stands."
"The point always stands," Ozpin agreed. "That is not what I'm questioning." He poured more coffee. "I am questioning the application. There is a way to be cautious that does not involve demonstrating military capability to a city preparing for a celebration of unity." He held the general's gaze. "And there is a way to train the next generation that does not involve hoping they will never be needed and a way that does not. I prefer the second."
"Do you honestly believe they can win a war?" Ironwood asked. "If it comes to that?"
Ozpin looked at him.
"I hope," he said, "they never have to."
The silence that followed had the quality of something that had been said before, many times, between people who each understood the other's position and had never successfully resolved the distance between them.
Ironwood left with the manner of someone carrying more than they arrived with. Sybyrh watched him go.
"He is not wrong," she said, after the door closed.
"No," Ozpin agreed. "He is not wrong. He is simply applying the right concern in the wrong way, which is a very specific kind of error."
"It is also a very specific kind of person," Tarro observed.
"Yes," Ozpin said. "It is."
He looked toward the window. "They should be here by now," he said, and the they was directed at Sybyrh, who understood it precisely.
"I believe so," she said. "Valvedern tends to err on the side of punctuality."
The main approach to Beacon —
The four Dark Elves arrived at Beacon's outer gate with the particular quality of people who are accustomed to being noticed and have made a decision about whether to let this matter.
Berethon had spent a great deal of his life being noticed. He had made his decision about it some decades ago, and the decision was that he would proceed at his own pace and allow the noticing to arrange itself around him.
Hyatan, beside him, noticed people more than she was noticed — she had the quality of someone whose attention moved outward rather than drawing attention inward, and she was already cataloguing the students visible on the paths around the academy with the thoughtful attention of someone taking inventory of something that matters.
A woman came down the main approach toward them — white-blonde hair, severe glasses, the bearing of someone who has structured her entire relationship with the world around the expectation that it will behave correctly if she is sufficiently specific about the standards.
"Your Majesties," Glynda said, and the bow she performed was not merely procedural. "Welcome to Beacon. Headmaster Ozpin sends his regards and will meet you shortly — he is finishing a conversation with another guest."
"James," Berethon said.
Glynda's expression did not change. "He is a very committed man."
"He has always been," Hyatan said, in the tone of someone who has many more words available on this subject and is choosing the more diplomatic subset.
"Ozpin asked me to escort you. He also asked me to pass along that he hopes the journey was comfortable." Glynda looked at Valvedern and Zero with the measured, professional assessment she brought to most things. "These are your escort?"
"Valvedern Arkham and his brother Zero," Berethon said. "Both are extremely capable."
"I have no doubt," Glynda said. She turned back toward the school. "If you'll follow me."
Hyatan fell into step and looked around at the academy with the particular attention of someone doing two things simultaneously — cataloguing the place for what it was, and overlaying it with what it means to the people she loves. The towers. The training grounds. The courtyard where, presumably, her sons had been walking for the past several months, learning things she could not teach them and becoming things she could not predict.
"How are they?" she asked.
Glynda turned slightly. "The princes?"
"And the others. All of them."
Glynda was quiet for a moment. "They are — remarkable," she said, and the word arrived with a weight that suggested it had been chosen carefully. "All of them. In different ways." A pause. "Odyn is—" She seemed to be selecting from several available descriptions. "He takes things seriously that most students their age don't quite understand yet. The responsibility. What it means to have other people's trust." She looked at Hyatan. "He has made a very close friendship with one of our students that I suspect is good for him. And for her."
Hyatan's expression did the small, involuntary thing that it did when she was thinking about her children with specific feelings that she generally kept private.
"Ruby Rose," she said.
Glynda looked at her.
"Sybyrh's reports are thorough," Hyatan said simply.
"They are," Glynda agreed.
"And Roy?"
"Roy is—" A sound that might have been the very beginning of a laugh, suppressed before it fully formed. "Roy is learning what it means to have someone be persistently interested in you when you haven't entirely decided what to do about it."
"The Yang," Berethon said.
"Yang Xiao Long," Glynda confirmed.
Berethon looked at Hyatan.
Hyatan looked at Berethon.
They said nothing. They didn't need to.
The Beacon library, late morning —
The board game had been going on long enough that the rules had become a living document, subject to ongoing negotiation, with Yang serving as both primary combatant and informal arbiter of disputes she was also party to, which was not a conflict of interest only because everyone at the table understood that was simply how Yang operated.
Odyn was watching the game the way he watched most things — with complete attention and without committing to a conclusion before he had sufficient information. He had, over the past twenty minutes, formed a fairly complete understanding of the rules, the strategic landscape of the current match, and the likely outcome, which was that Yang was going to win and Ruby was going to enjoy losing to her in a way that was almost the same as enjoying winning.
Roy, beside him, was at the stage of analysis where he was watching the board less and watching the players more, which Odyn recognized as his brother's way of indicating that he had already understood the game and moved on to finding it more interesting as a study in personality.
"Atlesian Air Fleet," Ruby announced, placing her card with the particular emphasis of someone who has been waiting for this moment.
Odyn watched the card. The card was effective.
He watched Yang's expression shift through three micro-stages — surprise, recognition, and then the specific settling of someone who has already thought about how to handle this.
"Trap card," Yang said.
Ruby's expression moved in the opposite direction from triumph.
Odyn had the thought that Ruby losing to Yang was structurally similar to Ruby losing to most things — she came down all the way, and then came back up all the way, without spending much time in the middle. The ceiling and the floor were both very close to the surface.
"Weiss," Yang said, turning to the heiress, "your turn."
What followed involved Yang spending six sentences explaining strategy to Weiss, a dramatic monologue from Weiss that concluded in empire-building, and then the particular quality of a situation that has been building to something for too long when Weiss realized that Yang was going to trap card her.
The tears were comical. The hug between Ruby and Weiss was comical. The comical quality of both was, somehow, also completely genuine, which was the specific kind of thing that made Ruby's friends difficult to stay exasperated with.
"Odyn," Ruby called from across the table, with the expression of someone deploying their last available resource, "help me."
"I'm not sure what you expect me to do," he said.
"I don't know either but please."
"I can't make the trap card un-played, Ruby."
"You could try."
"I could not try," he said. "That is also an option."
She pointed at him. He maintained eye contact with the mild expression of someone declining to be moved by the pointing.
Daikon, to no one's surprise, took considerable pleasure in pointing out to Weiss that she had been defeated by a trap card after a very elaborate victory speech, and the resulting exchange between them produced the specific quality of electricity that occurred whenever Daikon and Weiss were occupying the same twenty feet of air and both had opinions.
It was, Odyn thought, watching the silhouettes of a dragon and a tiger briefly visible behind each of them, exactly as exhausting as it looked and considerably more entertaining than it should have been.
Jaune arrived. Jaune asked to play. The ensuing negotiation was interrupted when Ruby went to answer him and didn't see the chair.
Everything that happened next happened quickly enough that Odyn's body responded before his mind caught up with it. He registered Ruby's trajectory, moved, caught her — and then the chair that had tripped her was under his feet and his center of gravity committed to a direction he hadn't chosen, and the corrective movement he made was sufficient to ensure Ruby wasn't hurt but not sufficient to keep either of them upright.
The floor, when it arrived, was cold and unyielding and entirely predictable in retrospect.
He assessed the situation.
Ruby was on top of him, one hand pressed against his chest, her face approximately twelve inches from his. She was blinking in the specific way of someone whose brain is still processing the sequence that had brought them here. He could feel the moment she finished processing it — her expression moved, in the span of a second, from confusion to comprehension to a blush so comprehensive that it appeared to be trying to encompass her entire face.
His own face was doing something that he was choosing not to examine too closely.
"Are you all right?" he asked, because this was the practical question and he was a practical person.
"Y-yes — I'm so sorry, I didn't — are you — I didn't mean to—"
"I know you didn't," he said. "I'm fine." He cleared his throat. "Ruby."
"Yes?"
"You could—" He managed to maintain a fairly steady register. "You're somewhat close at the moment."
She looked down at their respective positions with the expression of someone completing a calculation and not enjoying the result. The blush, which had already been thorough, somehow deepened.
She was on her feet in approximately the time it takes to make a decision you've already made. He was on his feet a moment later. The room had the specific quality of a room containing fifteen people who have all witnessed the same thing and are making various decisions about whether to comment on it.
"I'm so sorry," she said, to the floor, to him, to no one. "I didn't — it was an accident — I'm really—"
"Ruby," he said.
She looked up.
"It was an accident," he said. "I'm not upset. I'm asking you not to be upset either."
She took a breath. The blush was still present but no longer advancing.
"Okay," she said. "Yeah. Okay."
"Good." He looked at the room, which was doing its various things. "Jaune — they already have four players. Another time."
Jaune accepted this with the equanimity of someone for whom the present moment had produced more information than the board game had, and retreated.
Yang, across the table, had the expression she wore when she was saving something for deployment at a more advantageous time.
Odyn looked at her briefly.
She looked back at him with the expression of someone who has had a theory confirmed.
He looked away.
Sun and Neptune arrived with the energy of people whose afternoon had been going well and who intended to continue that trend.
Sun performed introductions in the specific manner of someone who is very excited about the people he is introducing and is not bothering to conceal this. Neptune received the room with the combined curiosity of someone who reads situations quickly and a particular interest in the white-haired girl who appeared to be managing a fierce, two-front argument with both a board game and a dark-haired boy with red eyes.
Neptune said: "Aren't libraries for reading?"
Ren said, from across the room: "Thank you."
Nora woke up, said pancakes, and fell back asleep.
Through the mental channel that all the Elves maintained — a narrow thing, used for tactical communication and, increasingly, for the specific variety of observation that did not want to be expressed aloud in a room full of other people — Odyn had been following the group's assessment of Blake.
She was present but not present. The body at the table, the hand on the game piece, the eyes moving between players without tracking the game. The quality of someone whose attention was somewhere else and who was using the visible performance of participation to avoid having to explain where.
She's worrying about Torchwick, Hailfire said through the link.
And the White Fang, Roy added.
And the fact that no one seems to be moving on it, Odyn said.
Should we say something? Flare asked.
Not yet. Her team will get there. Let them.
He watched Blake stand, shove Sun aside — not unkindly, but definitively — and leave. He watched the door close. He watched the room absorb the departure.
She'll talk when she's ready, he said.
Or when her teammates get there first, Baron noted.
Both, Khanna said. Probably both.
He cut the channel. He looked at the door. He thought about the conversation that was likely happening in Team RWBY's dormitory right now, or would be in the next hour, and about the particular quality of Blake's expression in the weeks since the docks — the person carrying a weight and not yet having found the angle from which it would be manageable.
He understood that specific weight better than he generally let on.
Team RWBY's dormitory, shortly after —
The conversation, when it happened, had the shape of something that had been building.
Weiss stood in the center of the room with the directness of someone who has decided to stop managing around a thing and go directly at it, and the six flying emblems she deployed as theatrical punctuation were, somehow, both completely over the top and completely honest.
"What is wrong?" she asked Blake. And then, before Blake could redirect: "Don't say nothing. I have known you for long enough now to know what nothing looks like. This is not it."
Blake looked at her. Then at the room — at Ruby and Yang, at Odyn and his team standing near the wall with the specific quality of people who are present as support rather than audience.
She sighed.
"I don't understand," she said, "how all of you can be calm about it."
"About Torchwick," Hailfire said.
Blake looked at her.
"And the White Fang," Hailfire continued. "And the fact that something is clearly being built and no one with authority seems to be moving to stop it." She held Blake's gaze. "You've been thinking about little else for two weeks. It shows."
"How do you—"
"Elven perception," Hailfire said simply. "You don't need to explain. I know what it looks like to carry something you can't put down."
Blake was quiet for a moment. Then: "Ozpin told us not to worry."
"Ozpin is managing a great deal," Odyn said, from his position near the wall. "That doesn't mean he's managing it wrong. But it also doesn't mean we sit and wait."
"We're students," Weiss said, and it was the voice of someone making an argument they're not entirely sure they believe. "We're not prepared to—"
"We may never be prepared," Blake said. "That's the problem. Our enemies aren't waiting for us to be ready."
The room held this.
Ruby raised her hand, with the specific combination of enthusiasm and uncertainty that was her characteristic mode of entering a conversation she believed in.
"Okay," she said. "All in favor of not waiting — of doing something — of being the people who do something instead of the people who wait for someone else to do something—" She looked around the room. "Aye."
Voices came back to her, in various registers and with various levels of irony, but they came back. All of them.
"We'll help," Roy said, for Team OHRF.
"Obviously," Hailfire added.
"We'll need Khanna," Odyn said. "And Baron. This kind of operation benefits from Khanna's ability to think three steps ahead of the obvious."
"Agreed," Weiss said, with the decisiveness of someone for whom agreeing with Odyn's cousin had become sufficiently normal that she only noticed it sometimes.
"She's my cousin," Odyn said.
"I know who she is."
"You said it like you came up with it."
"I was agreeing, not claiming credit."
"I know what agreeing sounds like—"
"Odyn," Roy said.
"I'll contact her," Odyn said.
Ruby was already heading for the door with the energy of someone who has remembered, in the middle of something important, that she left something in the library. "I left my board game," she said, with the particular shame of someone who knows this is not the most relevant thing she could be contributing at this moment and is doing it anyway.
"I'll come with you," Odyn said. "I need to reach Khanna and this conversation can happen moving."
The corridor outside Team RWBY's dormitory —
They found Khanna before they found the library.
She was in the hall with the expression of someone who had been on her way somewhere and had encountered an intersection with someone else's plan, which was, Odyn knew from long experience, how Khanna generally experienced most of his plans.
"We were coming to find you," he said.
"I know," she said. "I was coming to find you. What's happened?"
"Ruby's team wants to move on Torchwick. We offered OHRF's help. Weiss suggested you and Baron."
Khanna looked at Ruby. "You suggested me?"
"I—" Ruby blinked. "I said yes when Odyn suggested you."
"Good enough." Khanna fell into step with them. "I'm in. Baron will be in. What's the current intelligence?"
"Blake has the most," Ruby said. "She knows the White Fang better than any of us. We were going to work from there."
"Smart." Khanna nodded. "Let's go get your board game and then get back to the room before Weiss reorganizes the plan without input."
"She wouldn't—"
Khanna looked at Ruby.
"She absolutely would," Odyn confirmed.
"She would," Ruby admitted. "Let's hurry."
They were moving at speed through the corridor when Ruby rounded a corner and the impact was immediate and mutual — not a fall, exactly, but the specific kind of collision that happens when two people in motion are not attending to the same space.
Ruby bounced back a step. Odyn caught her arm. The person she had run into was already steadying herself — a girl with mint-green hair and red eyes, several years older than them, who had the quality of someone who moves through spaces with careful awareness and had been, until this moment, doing exactly that.
"Sorry!" Ruby said. "I'm so sorry, are you okay?"
"I'm fine." The girl offered her hand. "Just watch where you're going."
"I will, I'm really sorry." Ruby took the offered hand and straightened up with the efficiency of someone who has been apologizing for physical mishaps long enough to have developed a fast-recovery procedure. She turned to face the group the other girl was with and her expression arranged itself into the open, friendly register she brought to most new people. "I'm Ruby. These are some good friends of mine — Odyn and Khanna."
The group beyond the mint-haired girl was three people. A silver-haired boy with grey eyes and the particular loose-limbed ease of someone who has spent time being comfortable in situations that other people find tense. An older woman.
Odyn's attention moved to the woman first.
Then it stayed.
She was beautiful in the specific, composed way of someone who has been beautiful for long enough that it has become simply part of how they occupy space — not a performance of it, just a quality of their presence. Dark skin. Hair that was deep, vivid amber at the root and burned darker at the length. Eyes the color of—
Not fire.
Not quite.
The color that fire dreams about being.
She met his gaze with the calm, specific attention of someone who sees precisely what she is looking at and does not bother pretending otherwise.
He knew this face.
Not from meeting her. From having been told about her, in enough detail and with enough feeling that the description had become its own kind of memory.
He looked at the woman.
The woman looked at him.
"We're visiting from Haven," she said to Ruby, with the particular ease of someone answering a question before it arrives. "Just getting oriented. Your friend is right — the exchange students' building is east of here."
"Of course," Ruby said. "It happens to everyone. I got turned around three times my first week."
"That's very kind," the woman said.
The silver-haired boy — Mercury, Odyn heard the mint-haired girl call him, in the tone of someone managing him — had gone still in the specific way of people who encounter something that produces an involuntary pause in their ordinary functioning. He was looking at Khanna.
Khanna was looking at him.
Something moved across both their faces — not recognition exactly, not yet, but the antechamber of it. The moment before you know something you are about to know.
Odyn looked at Cinder Fall — because this was Cinder Fall, he was certain of it with the certainty of someone who has been told about a person at sufficient length and with sufficient feeling to recognize them on sight — and felt, behind his ribs, the specific and very careful management of something that wanted to become something other than management.
His family was in this woman's hands.
Parts of it.
What remained of parts of it.
He held the stillness. He held the management. He let Ruby say welcome to Beacon with the bright, genuine ease that she brought to everything, and he watched Cinder smile at her with the quality of a performance so habitual it had become automatic, and he thought about the specific things he knew and the things he would need to know before anything else happened.
Cinder walked away.
Mercury walked away.
The mint-haired girl walked away.
Ruby waved.
Odyn waited until they had rounded the corner. Then he said to Khanna, without raising his voice: "You saw it."
"Yes," Khanna said.
"And him."
"Yes."
Ruby looked between them. "What just happened?" she asked. "You both went very quiet very suddenly. That's not — you're never both quiet at the same time like that."
Odyn looked at Khanna. The decision was hers to make.
"Ruby," Khanna said, "go ahead to the library. Get your board game. We'll be right behind you."
Ruby looked at her. Then at Odyn. She had learned, over the past months, to read the specific difference between not now and I'm withholding something you need to know, and she had learned to trust the first even when it cost her something.
"Okay," she said. "I'll be quick."
She went.
Odyn turned to his cousin. Khanna was still looking at the corner where the three visitors had disappeared. Her expression had the quality of a fire that has been told to stay controlled and is doing so, at some effort.
"You're sure?" he said.
"I was seven," she said. "But yes. I'm sure."
He said nothing. There was nothing yet to say that would be the right thing to say, and he had learned long ago that the right thing said at the wrong moment does not become the right thing merely by being said.
"And Mercury," she said.
"You knew him."
"When I was a child. Before—" She stopped. "I thought he was dead."
"And now?"
"Now he's walking with her." She looked at her hands. Then she looked up at him. "I'm going to talk to him."
"Khanna—"
"I'm going to talk to him," she said again, and the repetition was not stubbornness but certainty, which are different things. "He needs to know he has a choice. Whether he takes it is his business. But he needs to know he has one."
Odyn looked at his cousin for a moment.
"Don't do anything that can't be taken back," he said.
"No," she agreed. "Not yet."
She turned. He watched her go — back down the corridor, toward the corner, toward Cinder Fall and whatever conversation was waiting there.
He would not follow. This was hers.
He went after Ruby.
The corridor, moments later —
Khanna came around the corner at a pace that was not running but was very close to it, and she came around it into the specific silence of three people who have been moving and have stopped because something behind them called their name.
Which she hadn't. She had just appeared, which in Khanna's case often had the same effect.
Cinder turned first.
And something happened in Cinder's expression — a very brief, very specific thing that Khanna had been watching for, which was the moment that Cinder identified her. The calculation of someone encountering a variable they had not expected. The recognition, passing quickly but not quickly enough, of someone they had expected to have accounted for.
"I need a moment," Khanna said, and directed the words at Mercury.
Cinder began to say something. Khanna looked at her.
"Not you," Khanna said. "I'll get to you."
The look she gave Cinder was not anger. Anger was a weather event — it moved and changed and eventually passed. This was something more permanent. The specific quality of a thing that has had years to become exactly what it is, without softening.
"What you did," she said, very quietly, "to my family. I know what you did. And I know who you are."
Cinder's expression did not change visibly. This, Khanna noted, was the response of someone very good at not revealing things, which told her something about how long Cinder had been doing this.
"I don't know what you're—"
"I was seven," Khanna said. "Not dead. Seven. There is a difference." She held Cinder's gaze for another moment, making sure the point had been received at the depth she intended it, then turned away from her and toward Mercury.
He was watching her with the expression of someone who has encountered a ghost and is trying to determine whether the ghost is real and what the answer commits him to.
"Merc," she said.
His breath came out.
"Khanna," he said.
She crossed to him and held him, briefly, with the specific fierceness of something that has been deferred for a long time and is finally permitted. He was taller than she remembered. He was still himself in the ways that mattered.
She stepped back and put a hand on his shoulder and looked at him.
"You've been having doubts," she said. "About what she's making you do."
"I—" He stopped.
"You don't have to answer. I know." She looked at him steadily. "I don't know what happened to you in the time between then and now, and that's not this conversation. This conversation is just: you have a choice. Whatever she's told you, whatever she's using to keep you — you have a choice. I'm telling you that because someone should."
He was quiet.
"I can't promise it'll be easy," she said. "I can't promise anything, actually. But I'm here. That's not nothing." She paused. "Think about it. I'll need your answer before long."
She looked at him for another moment — the long look of someone fixing something in memory, the specific kind of fixing that means I was not sure I would ever see you again and I need to take note of the fact that I am seeing you now.
Then she turned.
She stopped in front of Cinder one more time.
"If anything happens to him," she said, and she said it the way she said everything that was completely true — simply, with nothing added to make it sound more or less than what it was, "your death will not be quick. I am not threatening you. I am telling you how it will happen."
She walked away.
The corridor behind her was very quiet.
Emerald, who had said nothing during any of this, looked at Mercury.
Mercury looked at the floor.
Cinder looked at the space where Khanna had been, and for a moment — just a moment — the calculation in her expression was the calculation of someone who has been reminded that some variables cannot be fully accounted for.
Then she walked forward, and her expression settled back to its ordinary surface, and the corridor absorbed them.
Beacon's main hall — shortly after
Ozpin walked toward the entrance with Glynda, Sybyrh, and Tarro beside him, and the four of them came through the doors at the moment that Berethon and Hyatan were coming up the main approach.
Ozpin smiled. It was the smile of someone who has known a person for a very long time and finds the knowing still worth something.
"Old friends," he said.
"Old friend," Berethon said, and shook his hand with the grip of someone who means it.
Hyatan gave Ozpin a look that contained, in its specific configuration, both warmth and the particular brand of exasperation she reserved for people she was genuinely fond of. "You could have told us James was going to be here," she said.
"Would it have changed the journey?"
"No."
"Then I saved you the inconvenience of knowing in advance."
She looked at him. "You're very pleased with that answer."
"I usually am," he agreed.
Berethon's attention had moved to Tarro. "Koizumi," he said. Not a question — a recognition.
Tarro straightened slightly, with the particular quality of someone who was not expecting to be recognized and is recalibrating. "Your Majesty," he said.
"Your father was a good man."
"Yes," Tarro said. "He was."
The acknowledgment landed and was allowed to settle.
Berethon looked at Sybyrh, who had inclined her head in the Elven salute.
"At ease, Sybyrh," he said. "How are they?"
"Well, my Liege," she said. "They are well. And—" She paused, selecting her words. "They have found something here that I believe is good for them. A kind of belonging. I had not anticipated that."
"Odyn especially," Glynda said, and then, when several people turned to look at her: "He has a — very productive friendship with one of our students."
Hyatan looked at Ozpin.
"She means Ruby Rose," Ozpin said.
Hyatan said nothing. The nothing was very expressive.
"You'll meet her," Sybyrh said. "Probably quite soon. She tends to be where Odyn is, which is not something either of them appears to have planned."
"The best ones never do," Hyatan said.
Berethon looked at her.
She looked back at him.
The moment between them was brief and entirely legible to everyone watching and entirely private regardless.
"Shall we?" Ozpin said, gesturing toward the academy.
"We shall," Berethon said.
End of Chapter Nine
To be continued in Chapter Ten: Not as Planned — Cashing in a Debt
Reunions are strange things. They are, in their way, two separate events occupying the same moment: the reunion itself, and the reunion with the version of the person you have been carrying with you in their absence. These two things are never exactly the same. The person who returns is always slightly different from the person who was kept. This is not a problem. It is simply what time does, and what love does with what time has done.
In Beacon Academy, on an afternoon in autumn, two boys were somewhere in the building being themselves in ways their parents would not quite recognize and would recognize completely, which is the usual state of things.
They would all find each other soon.
That was sufficient.

Shonen onmyouji ending song 1
Visuals: characters of this story
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Hey guys, hopefully you enjoyed this chapter! As you saw, Cinder is responsible for the slaughter of the siblings and family of two main characters in this story.
As you can imagine, the hatred for Cinder is very deep rooted for Odyn and Khanna. What did you think of the interaction between Khanna and Mercury? Too short? If so, don't worry. They'll have a more emotional interaction later in the story.
The whole scene with odyn and Ruby in the library I felt I needed to add to put some further development in their relationship. But as you can tell, it's still more of a growing one sided attraction/close friendship than both having mutual romantic feelings for each other.
To end this, I'll throw a few polls your way:
Who do you think Hailfire should end up with?
A. Shallot (Dragon ball legends)
B. Yatsuhashi (CVFY)
C. Oscar P. (Volume 5)
D. Sun Wukong
E. Other (write in male character suggestion)
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Who goes on a date first?
A. Odyn and Ruby
B. Yang and Roy
C. Baron and Flare
D. Weiss and Daikon
E. Jaune and Pyrrha
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Anyways, that's all for now! Have an awesome week!
Next time: Chapter 10- Not as Planned? Cashing in a debt?!