Chapter Ten
Welcome to Beacon — Forces Converge
Peace is not the absence of conflict.
It is the interval between conflicts —
during which the wise prepare, and the unwary sleep.
I. Beacon Tower — Evening
The fleet arrived without warning, which was itself a message.
From the tower's upper windows, the Atlesian flagship was visible as it descended through the cloud cover with the deliberate unhurry of something that did not need to announce its arrival because its size made announcement redundant. Its angular design was the design of things built to be seen and to be understood when seen — the weapon arrays visible from this distance, the attendant Bullheads moving in their precise formation flanking it, everything calibrated to communicate capability before a single word had been spoken.
Glynda Goodwitch watched it from the office windows with the expression she reserved for things she found objectionable and had not yet decided how directly to say so. "Ironwood certainly loves bringing his work wherever he travels."
"Running an academy and a military does make a man busy," Ozpin agreed, from behind his desk. His eyes followed the formation past the windows. "But yes. Those are a bit of an eyesore."
At the conference table, the four parents from Sanctuary had been in the process of concluding the evening's briefing. They had covered the intrusion attempts, the ley line disturbances, Mist's visions. They had arrived at Ozpin's position on what to tell their children — enough to prepare, not enough to carry prematurely — and the meeting had been reaching its natural end.
The fleet had revised the timeline.
"His presence changes the calculus," Derek said, watching the flagship's descent with the specific attention of a tactician identifying a new variable. "This level of military commitment suggests his intelligence on the threat matches ours — or exceeds it."
"Ironwood operates by a different theory of deterrence," Reynar said. "Visible force as reassurance. The assumption that if people can see the protection, they'll feel protected."
"The assumption has merit," Yin Lang said. "The problem is that the people we're currently concerned about are not deterred by visible force. They plan around it."
The access chime from Ozpin's desk interrupted the observation. He straightened, set down his coffee, and said: "Come in."
The doors opened.
James Ironwood was a man who had occupied positions of authority long enough that the authority had stopped being something he wore and become something he was — present in the measured quality of his steps, in the way the room's spatial arrangement shifted slightly to accommodate his entrance without anyone consciously adjusting. He was in uniform, which meant he was here officially, which meant the warm greeting he extended his arms for was being offered across the distance of formality rather than without it.
"Ozpin," he said, with the specific warmth of old friends who have been in disagreement and are choosing, in this moment, to be old friends first.
"James," Ozpin replied, rising. They clasped hands. "It's been a long time."
Ironwood turned, and for a moment his expression had the quality of someone encountering something unexpected. Glynda's departure — she had said I'll be outside with the tone of someone who had decided this was not a conversation she wanted to moderate — left behind the four Sanctuary leaders, who were observing the new arrival with the various expressions of people who had heard of a person and were now revising their understanding against the evidence.
"General Ironwood," Ozpin said, with the ease of someone who had been making introductions across cultural divides for long enough to have a methodology for it. "The leaders of the Sanctuary Alliance. Derek and Katsura Dragonblade. Reynar and Yin Lang Tokyoheim. Their children are among our most exceptional exchange students."
Ironwood's tactical assessment was visible in the brief, comprehensive look he gave each of them before his expression settled into the professional courtesy of a military man meeting allies of uncertain alignment for the first time. "The Sanctuary Alliance. Your reputation reaches Atlas." He nodded with the slight formal inclination of a man who had strong opinions about deference but extended it when warranted. "An honor."
"General," Derek said, the word carrying the specific quality of one authority acknowledging another. "We've followed Atlas's developments with considerable interest."
"Perhaps," Katsura said, with the diplomatic grace of someone redirecting a conversation before it had the chance to become a negotiation, "we should give the headmasters space to confer. We can continue our discussion in the morning."
"Actually," Ironwood said, moving toward the chairs, "what I have to discuss involves all our interests." He looked at Ozpin. "You should have them stay."
Ozpin picked up the kettle. The ritual of it was deliberate — a way of establishing the register of the conversation before the conversation had its content. He poured carefully. He offered the cup to Ironwood, who accepted it and reached into his coat for his flask with the ease of someone who had been doing this for long enough to have stopped self-consciousness about it.
"So," Ozpin said, settling into his chair. "What brings you from Atlas with a fleet?"
"Vale this time of year," Ironwood said, with the humor of a man who had deployed this line before and knew exactly how much weight it carried and how much it deflected. "And the opportunity to see old friends."
"I can appreciate the sentiment," Ozpin said. "The fleet outside my window suggests the visit has additional purposes."
"Concern," Ironwood said. The humor had left his voice. "Oz, you and I both know why I brought those ships."
The room was quiet with this. Outside, the last of the Bullhead formation passed the windows in their precise arc.
"We are in a time of peace," Ozpin said, carefully. "Shows of force communicate things about our understanding of that peace that may not serve us."
"If what Qrow has reported is accurate —"
"If it is, we address it with the tools appropriate to a time of peace," Ozpin said. He held up one finger — the gesture of a man making a distinction he had made before and intended to make again. "The Vytal Festival is the expression of everything we've built. Its meaning is precisely the opposite of what your fleet communicates. I understand the instinct, James. I'm asking you to hold it."
"I'm being cautious," Ironwood said.
"As am I. Which is why we continue to train the best Huntsmen and Huntresses we can, and trust the institutions we've built, and do not announce to everyone watching that we believe those institutions are inadequate."
Ironwood set down his mug. He stood. He walked toward the door with the specific quality of movement of a man who is not leaving but is creating space to say something he has been carrying.
At the door, he turned back. "Ask yourself something, Ozpin. Honestly." His voice had the quality of someone who had been in enough actual wars to have arrived at the question the hard way. "Do you believe your children can win a war?"
The question landed in the room and remained there.
Ironwood walked out.
The doors closed with their characteristic soft precision, and the office was quiet with the specific quality of a room that has held an important question and is now holding the silence that follows it.
Ozpin looked at his coffee. He did not pick it up.
"I hope," he said, to the room — to the windows, to the fleet visible beyond them, to the four people who remained and who were watching him with the various expressions of people who had just heard the question and were forming their own answers — "they never have to."
Through the windows, the flagship completed its descent. Its weight settled onto the landing pad with a sound too distant to hear but somehow felt — the specific gravity of something very large arriving and intending to stay.
Derek was the first to speak.
"He's not wrong about the threat," he said. "He's wrong about the response."
"The distinction matters," Reynar agreed. "A man who identifies the right problem and applies the wrong tool can cause as much damage as the problem itself."
Yin Lang looked at the windows. "Our children are sleeping somewhere below us," she said. Not as a non-sequitur — as the thing the conversation had been about the entire time, stated plainly. "We should make sure that what we're building up here actually serves them."
"Yes," Ozpin said. He picked up his coffee. "We should."
"The general's concerns align with our intelligence reports. Perhaps it's time to consider that our children's training will need to accelerate beyond what we initially planned."
"The question," Yin Lan added thoughtfully, "is whether we're preparing them to be huntsmen and huntresses, or soldiers."
Ozpin stared out at the fleet through his windows, his reflection ghostlike against the glass. "In the coming days, I fear the distinction may prove meaningless."
II. The Beacon Library — The Following Afternoon
The library at Beacon was one of those rooms that had a personality independent of what happened in it — the high windows, the quality of the afternoon light, the specific smell of institutions that had accumulated books over generations. It was designed for quiet, which made it a useful location for understanding who at Beacon was constitutionally capable of quiet.
The answer, on this particular afternoon, was: not many.
Team RWBY had claimed the long table near the east windows and set up Remnant: The Game with the confident placement of people who had done this before and had strong feelings about their methods. The dragon and balrog faunus had arrived with the stated intention of studying and had achieved this for approximately eight minutes before the game's ambient noise made studying a theoretical rather than practical activity.
They had stayed. Most of them were pretending to read.
The dragon and balrog faunus had initially settled at a nearby table with their own studies, but the increasingly animated gameplay had drawn their attention. Now they sat in a loose semicircle around Team RWBY's table, some pretending to read while others openly watched the strategic battle unfold.
Ruby had been building to her move for some time. Her silver eyes were fixed on the board with the concentrated intensity she brought to things she was determined to win, and when she raised her head and pointed at Yang with the authority of a general who has identified her moment, the finger carried genuine conviction.
"Hmmmmm.... All right... All right!" She suddenly pointed dramatically at Yang.
"Yang Xiao Long, prepare your kingdom for battle!"
Yang thrust her elbow down as her fist came down with theatrical force. "Bring it on!"
"I deploy the Atlesian Air Fleet!" Ruby slapped her card down on the table with authority, causing Yang to feign a look of shock. "Looks like I get to fly right over your Ursai and attack your walls directly!"
Ruby made airplane sounds. She made bombing sounds. She formed her hands into the shape of a bird and flew them over Yang's section of the board with the specific pleasure of someone executing a plan they have been imagining for some time.
"You fiend!" Yang cried out , pointing with the moral outrage of someone who has been outmaneuvered by a sibling and intends to register this publicly.
From their nearby table, Kouga watched this exchange with the expression of someone encountering a new data point. "Their tactical thinking is..." He paused, searching for the accurate word.
"Creative," Max supplied, without looking up from the book he was not reading.
Ruby ducked down at one end of the table as the camera zoomed across to show the detailed board with its intricate player pieces. "And since Atlas is part of Mantle, my repair time is only one turn!" She peeked her head up, giving a look of surprise as Yang's arrogant laughter echoed through the library.
"Pretty sneaky, sis, but you just activated my trap card!" Yang raised a card triumphantly, showing it to everyone watching.
"Whaaat?!" Ruby's sound of distress carried the specific quality of genuine feeling that Mist couldn't help but giggle.
"Giant Nevermore!" Yang slammed the card down with dramatic force. "If I roll a seven or higher, fatal feathers will slice your fleet in two!"
"But if you roll a six or lower, the Nevermore will turn on your own forces!" Ruby pointed at Yang with desperate hope.
"That's just a chance," Yang said, with the serenity of someone who has committed to a risk and found the commitment restful, "I'm willing to take."
The two sisters glared at each other across the board with such intensity that Hon'oh whispered to Yukikaze, "They take this more seriously than some actual battles I've seen."
"They do," Yukikaze agreed, watching the stare-down with obvious appreciation. "I find it admirable."
Yang's triumphant shout arrived at a volume that made two rows of students lift their heads from their actual studying. Yang did not acknowledge this. She was already explaining the consequences to the board.
"Nooo!" Ruby's hands went to her face. "My fearless soldiers!"
"Androids, probably," Yang said, with the philosophical distance of someone reconciling herself to a cost she did not pay.
"You will be avenged," Ruby told her fallen fleet, with the solemnity of an oath.
At Team JNPR's table, Pyrrha was studying with the focused patience of someone who had long since accepted that studying in proximity to Nora was a specific discipline rather than a conventional one. Nora was sleeping with her face turned to one side, a snot bubble inflating and deflating with metronomic regularity. Jaune was not studying.
Pyrrha glanced at the comic book with the expression of someone who had made this observation before and arrived at the same response. She set her hand on it, slid it from under his elbow, replaced it with a textbook, and returned to her own work in a single continuous motion.
Jaune looked at the textbook. He looked at where the comic book had been. He looked at Pyrrha.
Pyrrha's attention was fully on her notes.
"Not until I draw my rewards! Which are double this round thanks to the Mistral Trade Route!"
"Bah!"
"Oh. Have pancakes," Nora mumbled in her sleep, causing Toshiro to raise an eyebrow at the non-sequitur.
"Oh, and what's this? " Yang's voice rose with the renewed enthusiasm of someone who has found a second vein. "The Smugglers of Wind Path? That means I'm taking two cards in hand!"
"Bah! Bah, I say!" Ruby continued her protests.
A Nevermore game piece suddenly flew through the air, sailing over Jaune's shoulder. Another piece bounced directly off his head, causing him to look around in confusion while the dragon faunus tried to hide their amusement and arranged their faces into expressions of focused reading with varying degrees of success.
Ruby collapsed dramatically on the table with a theatrical groan. "Nooo!"
"All right, Weiss — you're up," Yang announced, turning to their teammate.
Weiss studied the board with the expression of someone who has been presented with a problem that does not have a clear optimal solution and is finding this situation personally offensive.
"I have... absolutely no idea what's going on."
Yang moved to her side with the generous energy of someone who has found that explaining things is nearly as enjoyable as winning. "Easy. You're playing Vacuo, which means Vacuo-based cards come with a bonus."
"That sounds dumb," Weiss replied flatly.
Shoryu made a sound he had not authorized, somewhere in the register between amusement and agreement. Weiss noticed this and added it to her list of grievances without specifying it.
"See, you've got Sandstorm, Desert Scavenge —" Yang produced a card with the reverence of someone presenting evidence that will change a trial. "Resourceful Raider. You can take Ruby's discarded Air Fleet —"
"Nooo!" Ruby cried out in renewed anguish.
"— and put it in your hand. And since Vacuo warriors have endurance against Natural hazards, you can use Sandstorm to disable my ground forces and infiltrate my kingdom simultaneously." Yang pointed at Weiss with mock severity. "Just know that this will be considered a declaration of war."
"Okay"
"And that means...?" Weiss asked, with the caution of someone approaching a conclusion they are not certain they want to reach.
"You're just three moves away from conquering Remnant!" Ruby announced, with the solemnity of a herald.
Something happened to Weiss's face.
Weiss stood suddenly, and a thunder clap seemed to accompany her overjoyed psychotic laughter.
The chair scraped back with a sound that had the quality of a threshold being crossed. What came out of Weiss Schnee in the next several seconds was, by any objective measure, bloodthirsty — a declaration of conquest and pillage and the specific fate of her enemies' children that would have been alarming from anyone and was particularly alarming from someone who had, until this moment, been the game's least engaged participant.
"Y-yes! Fear the almighty power of my forces! Cower as they pillage your homes and weep as they take your children from your very arms!"
The watching dragon faunus exchanged startled glances at this unexpected display of bloodthirsty enthusiasm from the usually composed heiress. They now had the expressions of people revising their understanding of a person.
"Trap card..." Yang said, almost gently with her arm appearing to hold another card.
"Huh?" Weiss's manic expression faltered.
Weiss's armies dissolved.
Yang shuffled the pieces on the board, and Weiss' pieces disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Your armies have been destroyed."
She sat back down. She put her face in her hands. "I hate this game of emotions we play," she said, with the specific devastation of someone who has been briefly and completely themselves and is now experiencing the aftermath.
Ruby hopped into Weiss' lap with sisterly comfort. "Stay strong, Weiss! We'll make it through this together!"
"Shut up," Weiss said, pulling her closer. "Don't touch me."
Yang put her arms up behind her head with satisfied casualness. "Alright Blake, you're up!"
Blake, who had been staring out the window with obvious distraction, startled slightly. "Oh, um, sorry, what am I doing?"
"You're playing as Vale, trying to conquer the Kingdoms of Remnant!"
She startled slightly when Yang spoke her name. "Oh. Right. Sorry."
Weiss watched this. Something in her expression shifted from competitive engagement to the sharper awareness of someone who has noticed a pattern and is deciding what to do with the noticing.
◆ ◆ ◆
III. The Library — Continuing
Jaune had been watching the game from Team JNPR's table with the specific expression of someone who has an opinion about whether they should be included in something and is building toward acting on it.
"Hey," he said, approaching the table with his hands folded in front of him in the gesture of someone who has decided that supplication is the correct strategy. "Can I play?"
"We've already got four people," Ruby said, with genuine regret.
"Besides, this game requires a certain level of tactical cunning —"
"You attacked your own naval fleet two turns ago," Yang said.
"— which I am entirely capable of demonstrating," Weiss continued, without acknowledging this.
"Bring it on, Ice Queen!"
"I'll have you know," Jaune said, drawing himself up with the specific energy of someone who has found their ground, "that I have been told I am a natural-born leader."
"By who? Your mother?" Weiss asked skeptically.
"A-and Pyrrha!" Jaune gestured toward his partner.
"Hello again!" Pyrrha waved cheerfully from their table.
Jaune folded his hands together in a begging gesture. "Come on, let me play your hand for a turn!"
"I'm not trusting you with the good citizens of Vacuo!" Weiss protested.
"Why not? Let me play your hand for one turn," Jaune said, deploying his most convincing tone. "Come on. You've trusted me with way more important stuff. I mean, you told us all that Blake is secretly a —"
Pyrrha moved.
She had been seated eight feet away and was now beside him, her hand over his mouth, in a period of time that suggested she had covered the distance during the first syllable of the word rather than after it. Her expression was the expression of someone who has seen where a sentence was going and has made a decision about whether it arrives.
"— fun-loving person," she said, to the table, with the composure of a woman who had committed to a cover and was committed to it completely, "whom we all admire and respect."
Behind her palm, Jaune made a sound. It was possible he was laughing. It was possible he was apologizing. The distinction was difficult to establish.
Everyone looked nervously at Blake, who appeared obviously annoyed that her secret had nearly been revealed.
Blake's expression was the expression of someone who has just been almost-revealed in a library by Jaune Arc and is feeling the specific feelings that came with that.
The dragon and balrog faunus were already aware of Blake's heritage, and each of them found something important to read.
"Right. That. Ladies, enjoy your battle," Jaune said with an awkward bow as Pyrrha walked away, her face flushed with embarrassment and walked him back to their table with the patient guidance of someone who had accepted that this was part of the partnership.
The arrival of Sun and Neptune redistributed the room's energy.
Sun moved through social spaces the way he moved through everything — without friction, with a native ease that was not performed but was simply how he was built. Neptune's entrance was more considered, the careful projection of someone who had opinions about first impressions and was executing them. He looked around the library's current state — the game board, the noise, the general evidence of how Beacon students treated study spaces — with the expression of someone encountering a gap between expectation and reality.
"'Sup losers," Sun's voice called out from across the library as he appeared holding his fingers in a peace sign.
"Hey Sun!" Ruby greeted enthusiastically.
Neptune appeared beside him, looking somewhat out of place in the academic setting.
"Ruby, Yang, Blake... Ice Queen," Sun said casually.
"Why does everyone keep calling me that?" Weiss demanded in exasperation.
"I never got a chance to formally introduce you to my old friend," Sun continued, ignoring her protest.
"Uhh, aren't libraries for reading?" Neptune asked, looking around at the game-focused chaos.
"Thank you!" Ren's arms went up from his table with the vindication of someone who had been waiting for this acknowledgment for forty-five minutes.
"Pancakes!" Nora announced from a half-woken state.
"Shut up," Sun told Neptune, with the affection of long friendship. "Don't be a nerd."
"Intellectual," Neptune corrected, with a finger wag and the transition to a smile that he had clearly invested in. He approached the table. "I'm Neptune."
"So Neptune," Weiss said, with an interest in her voice that had not been there during the game, "where are you from?"
"Haven," Neptune replied, approaching Weiss with confident swagger. "And I don't believe I've caught your name, snow angel."
"Um, I'm Weiss," she replied, a slight flush coloring her cheeks. The composition of her posture changed by approximately three degrees in the direction of self-consciousness.
From the edge of the table, Jaune's "are you kidding me" carried the precise frequency of a person watching something they had been trying to achieve being achieved effortlessly by someone else in under thirty seconds.
"Pleasure to meet you," Neptune said smoothly, completely ignoring Jaune's reaction.
The dragon faunus watched this social dynamic with fascination, particularly noting how quickly Neptune had captured Weiss' attention where others had failed.
Sun settled into the chair beside Blake with the casual familiarity of someone who had decided they were comfortable in a space and was not going to ask permission. "I never took you for the board game type."
Blake stood.
The standing had the quality of a decision made before the moment that executed it — the specific abruptness of someone who has been sitting with something for long enough that it has become intolerable. "I think I'm done playing, actually," she said, and her voice was even and controlled and not very convincing. "I'll see you later."
She left.
The table watched her go. The game board sat between them with its ongoing conquest unconcluded.
As she walked away, the concern in her teammates' eyes was obvious to everyone watching.
"Women," Nora shrugged, having fully awakened to witness Blake's departure.
Koga found himself rising instinctively to follow Blake, his protective instincts activated by her obvious distress.
"Perhaps someone should..."
"Give her space," Max advised quietly, though his own expression showed concern. "Whatever's troubling her, she needs to work through it first."
The game of Remnant continued, but the mood had shifted. Everyone present could sense that Blake's troubles ran deeper than simple distraction, and in the back of their minds, each wondered what storms were gathering on Beacon's horizon.
◆ ◆ ◆
IV. Team RWBY Dormitory — Evening
The night sky was visible through the dormitory window, stars twinkling peacefully over Beacon Academy. But inside the room, Blake sat on her bed with her knees folded to her chest, lost in troubled memories that played like echoes in her mind.
Brothers of the White Fang, why are you aiding this scum?
The White Fang and I are going in on a joint business venture.
She had been in the Dust shop. She had seen the organization she had left doing what it had become. She had heard Roman Torchwick's voice over the memory of the organization's original voice, and the distance between them had been impossible to measure because it was not a distance of ideology but of something that had been corrupted from within while she had been inside it, so gradually that she had not noticed until she was already somewhere she had not meant to go.
The memory shifted. Ozpin's office, after:
I was hoping we might have a chance to talk.
Of course.
You passed the entrance exam with flying colors.
I was raised outside the kingdoms. If you can't fight, you can't survive.
He had looked at her with the specific quality of attention that had suggested he was going to say something she had not anticipated, and he had said it in the way that people said things they had known for longer than the conversation:
Rich, poor, Human... Faunus...
She had stared at him. The bow was still on her head. He had said it as if it were not something she had been guarding.
Why do you wear that bow, Blake? Why hide who you are?
You may be willing to accept the Faunus, Professor, but your species is not.
True. But we are continuing to take strides to lessen the divide.
With all due respect — you need to start taking some larger strides. Until then, I'd rather avoid the attention. I want people to see me for who I am. Not what I am.
And what are you?
She had not understood the question at the time. She was beginning to understand it now.
He had known, then, what she was not yet willing to confirm. He had offered her the space to confirm it or not. He had let her choose.
You wouldn't have been the first. But what happened tonight was not an isolated incident. Blake — are you sure there is nothing else you would like to tell me?
I'm sure.
Very well. If you ever need to talk — please, don't hesitate.
She had not talked to him for months. She had kept her bow and kept her silence and managed the distance between what she knew and what she was telling the people around her until the dock, when her hands had moved to the bow before she had decided they would and the decision had already been made in a layer of her that was below the level of conscious choice.
She was thinking about what came next. Not as an abstraction — as the specific, practical question of whether the people who were now in Beacon's halls were the people she had been afraid of for the last four months or something worse.
The sound of the dormitory door opening interrupted her painful recollections as her teammates entered, their voices carrying the mixed emotions of the evening's social encounters.
"Ugh, we should have never let him play!" Yang was complaining.
"You're just mad cuz' the new guy beat you! See, if you had just attacked when I told you none of this would have happened," Ruby replied cheerfully.
As Blake moved toward the door to leave, Weiss' sharp voice stopped her cold.
"Stop." Weiss pointed at Blake, causing her hand to retract from the doorknob. "Lately you've been quiet, antisocial and moody!"
"Uh, have you met Blake?" Yang interjected with dry humor.
"Which I get is kind of your thing, but you've been doing it more than usual! Which quite frankly, is unacceptable! You made a promise to me, to all of us, that you would let us know if something was wrong!" Weiss performed an elaborate flip through the air as six copies of her emblem materialized around her. "So, Blake Belladonna, what is wrong!?"
Weiss balanced precariously on the back feet of a chair for a moment before quickly putting it away and returning to stand with the others.
Blake felt the weight of their concern and expectation pressing down on her.
"I just, I don't understand how everyone can be so calm."
Ruby approached her with genuine worry.
"You're still thinking about Torchwick?"
"Torchwick, the White Fang, all of it! Something big is happening and no one is doing anything about it!"
"Ozpin told us not to worry. Between the police and the Huntsmen, I'm sure they can handle it," Yang said reasonably.
"Well I'm not! They don't know the White Fang like I do!"
The admission slipped out before Blake could stop it, revealing more than she had intended.
"Okay, between blowing up nightclubs, stopping thieves, and fighting for freedom, I'm sure the three of you think that you're all ready to go out and apprehend these ne'er-do-wells!" Weiss declared dramatically.
"Uh, who?" Ruby asked, confused by the archaic terminology.
"But let me once again be the voice of reason. We're students! We're not ready to handle this sort of situation!"
"Well yeah, but..." Ruby began hesitantly.
"We're not ready!"
Blake's frustration finally boiled over. "And we may never be ready! Our enemies aren't just going to sit around and wait for graduation day. They're out there, somewhere, planning their next move, and none of us know what it is, but it's coming! Whether we're ready or not!"
The passion in her voice, the desperate urgency, seemed to electrify the room.
Ruby raised her hand with manic enthusiasm, making random gestures as she spoke. "Okay, all in favor of becoming the youngest Huntresses to single-handedly taking down a corrupt organization conspiring against the Kingdom of Vale... say aye."
"Yes! I love it when you're feisty!" Yang pumped her fist enthusiastically and pointed at Blake.
"Well, I suppose it could be fun," Weiss admitted with growing excitement.
"None of you said aye!" Ruby protested.
"Alright then, we're in this together!" Blake declared, feeling a surge of hope for the first time in weeks.
"Let's hatch a plan!" Ruby gestured dramatically.
"Yeah!" Yang made finger guns at Ruby.
Ruby suddenly gasped in realization. "I left my board game at the library!"
"We're doomed," Weiss said, placing her hand to her head in exasperation.
"I'll be right back!" Ruby called out, running from the room and down the hallway.
The sound of the collision arrived before anyone had time to be concerned about the departure.
◆ ◆ ◆
V. The Corridor Outside Team RWBY's Dormitory — Evening
Ruby picked herself up from the floor with the efficiency of someone who had been falling since childhood and had developed a methodology for recovery. The person she had run into was already standing, which meant they had absorbed the collision with more composure than she had.
"Oh — sorry, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," the woman said. "Watch where you're going."
She was dark-skinned with mint-green hair and an expression that communicated the situation's inconvenience without making a production of it. Beside her, a silver-haired young man assessed the corridor with the specific quality of someone who was always assessing things. And behind them —
Ruby looked at the third figure.
She processed the amber eyes, the quality of the woman's stillness, the particular way she occupied the corridor's space — as though the corridor had been arranged for her arrival rather than the other way around.
Ruby processed none of these things consciously. She processed them in the layer below conscious processing, the one that noted tone and posture and the way a person's eyes moved in a space.
"Hi!" she said, with the warmth she deployed for new people. "I'm Ruby! Are you new?"
"Visiting from Haven," the silver-haired man said, easily. "For the festival."
"Oh, but exchange students have their own dormitory — it's just east of here. Easy to get turned around," Ruby said, understanding the situation with the generous assumption of innocent error that was characteristic of her.
"Thanks," the woman with the amber eyes said. A pause, in which something moved in her expression that had nothing to do with gratitude. "Maybe we'll see you around."
"Yeah, maybe! And —" Ruby had already half-turned toward the library before she turned back. "Welcome to Beacon!"
The three figures continued down the corridor. Ruby watched them go with the slight, unanchored sensation of someone who has said the right things and done nothing wrong and is nevertheless not entirely sure what just happened.
She started toward the library.
She stopped.
Ruby started to head back toward her dorm room, but something made her pause in the corridor. At the corridor's far end, where the main hallway intersected with the wing that led to the exchange student dormitories, Skye, the Storm Balrog Empress from Sanctuary, had emerged from one of the side corridors and now stood face-to-face with the woman who had introduced herself as being from Haven.
She stood at the intersection with her arms at her sides and lightning already visible at her fingertips in a way that had not been visible this morning.
The three visitors had not yet rounded the corner. Cinder saw her first.
The quality of Cinder's stillness changed.
What struck Ruby as odd was the visible tension between them. For two people who should have been meeting for the first time, there was an electric undercurrent to their interaction that seemed... familiar. Hostile, even.
"Cinder," Skye said, her voice carrying the subtle rumble of distant thunder that Ruby had noticed during their earlier introductions. "I won't say this is unexpected."
"Nor will I." Cinder's head tilted, very slightly, in the way that heads tilted when a smile was being precisely managed.
""It's been a long time, dear cousin," Cinder replied with a smile that didn't reach her amber eyes. "How... unexpected to see you here."
Ruby pressed herself against the wall. Ruby's eyes widened. Cousins? But if they were family, why did the air between them seem to crackle with more than just Skye's natural lightning affinity?
"I could say the same," Skye responded, lightning beginning to spark more visibly around her fingertips. "Long enough that I had hoped your choices might have changed," Skye said.
The lightning at her hands was contained but present, the way a held breath was present.
"And short enough that I see they haven't."
She continued.
"Though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find you skulking around where you don't belong."
"My choices," Cinder said, with the lightness of someone who had chosen her register for this conversation and was committed to it, "have led me to exactly where I intend to be. Which is more than most people can say."
Mercury and Emerald had shifted into positions that were not quite flanking positions and not quite casual. The shift was small enough to be deniable and precise enough to be deliberate.
"You're at Beacon," Skye said. "You are here for a purpose I can identify from the shape of your choices over the past three years. And you are standing in a school full of people who have not done anything to deserve what you're planning to bring into their lives."
"Skulking is such an ugly word," Cinder said with false sweetness. "I prefer 'exploring educational opportunities.'"
"Is that what we're calling it now?" Skye's storm-touched features hardened, and for a moment, Ruby could swear she saw actual lightning flicker in the Storm Balrog Empress's eyes.
"You always did like to project intention," Cinder said. "You'll make an interesting opponent, cousin. You always have." She took one step toward Skye, with the specific unhurry of someone who was not threatened and wanted this to be clearly understood. "The question is whether you'll choose to be an opponent at all. Interference has costs."
"I'm familiar with the costs," Skye said. "I'm familiar with yours, too."
Ruby found herself pressing closer to the wall, instinctively understanding that she was witnessing something far more significant than a simple family disagreement. The power emanating from both women was palpable, and she realized with growing alarm that this wasn't just tension between relatives - this was the meeting of two forces that stood fundamentally opposed to each other.
The temperature in the corridor was doing something. Ruby could feel it in the way that temperature changes could sometimes be felt before they were measured — the competing energies of heat and lightning finding the air between the two women and doing something neither cold nor warm to it.
Then Cinder stepped back. The movement was precisely calibrated — not retreat, not the distance of someone who has been made to yield, but the withdrawal of someone who has obtained what they came for and is choosing when to conclude.
"This has been illuminating," she said. "Give my regards to your alliance, won't you?"
"You always were too serious, dear Skye," Cinder said, taking a step closer to her cousin. "Perhaps that's why you ended up following such... traditional paths."
"And you always preferred the easy road," Skye countered, her own stance becoming more combative. "Tell me, cousin, does your current... benefactor... know about your family connections? Or are you keeping that as carefully hidden as everything else about your true nature?"
"My nature is exactly what it needs to be," Cinder replied, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "The question is, will you interfere with what I came here to accomplish?"
"That depends entirely on what you're planning to accomplish," Skye shot back. "But knowing you as I do, I suspect it's nothing that serves the greater good."
Ruby realized she needed to get back to her teammates and alert them to this development, but she found herself frozen by the intensity of the confrontation. These weren't just two powerful individuals having a disagreement - this was a clash between fundamentally different worldviews, with her school potentially caught in the middle.
"The greater good," Cinder laughed softly, the sound carrying notes of mockery and something darker. "How wonderfully naive you still are, Skye. Some of us have moved beyond such simplistic concepts."
"And some of us still remember what it means to protect rather than destroy," Skye replied, lightning now dancing openly along her arms.
For a moment, Ruby thought they might actually fight right there in Beacon's hallway. But then Cinder stepped back, her expression shifting to one of cold calculation.
As Cinder turned to leave with Mercury and Emerald, she paused and looked directly down the hallway to where Ruby was hidden.
"Oh, and cousin?" Cinder called back without turning around. "Do be careful. Beacon can be such a dangerous place for those who don't know when to mind their own business."
The threat was unmistakable, and Ruby felt a chill run down her spine as she realized that Cinder had known she was there the entire time.
After the three Haven "students" disappeared around the corner, Skye remained standing in the hallway for a long moment, her shoulders tense with barely contained energy. Ruby was about to approach her when the Storm Balrog Empress spoke without turning around.
"Ruby Rose." She said it without turning. Her voice was quiet and carried the specific quality of words chosen carefully in a moment that required care. "You should go back to your teammates. And when you see Professor Ozpin —" a pause in which something was being decided — "mention that reunions between old family can sometimes carry complications that outlast the reunion."
Ruby swallowed hard, understanding that she had just witnessed something that would change everything. The enemy wasn't just at their gates - they were walking Beacon's halls, and they had connections that ran deeper than anyone had imagined.
Blake pressed herself against the wall, her heart racing. The enemy wasn't coming - they were already here. And Ruby, sweet, innocent Ruby, had just welcomed them with open arms - though perhaps not as innocently as Blake had initially thought.
Through the dormitory window, Beacon's grounds were quiet in the late evening — the paths empty, the lights warm, the whole of the academy holding its quality of a place that was between the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
Somewhere in the exchange student wing, three people who were not exchange students were settling in for the night.
In the main corridor, the intersection where two cousins had met and not fought was already empty, already ordinary, holding nothing but the residual trace of lightning that had no reason to be there.
The shattered moon was visible through the window, its fractured light reaching the floor of the dormitory in pieces that would not reassemble into the whole they had come from.
None of them slept particularly well.
The war was closer than any of them realized, and the battle lines were far more complex than they could have ever imagined.
To be continued....
✦ Ending Theme ✦
Akeboshi
Demon Slayer — Mugen Train Arc
The ending sequence opens on a slow descent through cloud cover — the Atlesian flagship visible below, enormous and angular, its weapon arrays catching the evening light. Then the grounds: the ant-like figures moving along Beacon's paths, the military personnel in their precise formations, the ordinary students navigating around them with the mild bewilderment of people who have woken up in a different kind of day.
Dissolve to the library: Weiss standing with her arms raised in conquest, the table arranged around her in the specific chaos of a very good afternoon. Then the dormitory: Blake's still figure on her bed, the window showing the same grounds, the same light, a different quality of looking. Then the corridor — two women at an intersection, lightning in the air between them, the space holding the shape of what has just happened the way spaces held shapes.
Final image: the dormitory window at night. On one side of the glass, the four members of Team RWBY in a circle — Ruby talking, the others listening, the quality of the room the quality of people who have decided what they are going to do and are making the decision together. On the other side of the glass: Beacon's grounds, the fleet visible in the distance, a single figure moving along one of the lower paths who pauses and looks up at the tower window for exactly one moment before continuing.
The figure moves on. The window holds the warmth of the room inside. The shattered moon. Dark.
Coming Next —
Chapter Eleven: A Minor Hiccup — Calm Before the Storm, Part One