Hey everyone, RoseSaiyan2 here again. I hope you guys are enjoying the story so far. For anyone who has favorited, followed, or read the story and liked it so far.. thank you! I really appreciate it that people actually like my stories that I write. It's not easy being a wattpad, webnovel, or fanfiction.
Anywho, just thought I'd let you guys know I appreciate the positive feedback.
As always, I don't own Dbz/ Dbz Kai/DBS or Rwby and their characters. I only own the oc's who appear in this story along with permission to use the oc's of Tarro and Daikon via ComparedDreadx.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Shocking Truth, Part II — and the Dance
Part I — What Blake Carried Home
Location: Beacon Academy Corridors | Evening
Blake walked.
That was the only thing she was doing, and it was taking more concentration than walking usually required, because the conversation she had just left was still happening inside her — still unspooling, still finding new surfaces to catch on.
They are our sons.
She heard it again in Sala's voice, which was the voice of someone saying a thing they had been holding for nineteen years and finding the weight of it changed when it was finally outside them. She heard Rhubar's measured certainty. She heard the specific sound of Sala crying — not dramatically, not loudly, just the quiet overflow of a feeling that had been compressed into a very small space for a very long time.
She walked past the library without going in. Past the common area. Past the cluster of students who were talking about the dance tomorrow, their voices bright and uncomplicated in a way that felt, at this particular moment, like they were happening in a different world.
We think of you as our daughter.
She stopped at a window and looked at the grounds below — the paths between buildings lit for evening, a few students moving through them, the academy going about the specific quiet business of a school at the end of a day.
Nova and Turuk were somewhere in that building. Going about their evening. Studying or sparring or, in Nova's case, probably sitting somewhere and reading in that focused, unhurried way he had that she had always found particularly him.
They had no idea.
She had no idea, until an hour ago.
She pressed her forehead briefly against the cool glass of the window and let herself have exactly thirty seconds of not knowing what to do about this.
Then she pushed off the glass and started walking again.
She could not tell them. Not yet. They needed to hear it from Rhubar and Sala — not from their sister, not as a piece of secondhand information that arrived without context or preparation. They needed to hear it from the people themselves, in a moment that was chosen for them rather than dropped on them from the wrong angle.
She would keep the secret.
She would also, she acknowledged, be carrying it for as long as she kept it — the specific weight of knowing something that changed everything for people you loved, and choosing not to tell them until the time was right.
She could do that.
She had carried heavier things.
Please, Blake. Keep this between us for a while longer. Not to hide the truth — only to give us time to do this properly. They deserve to hear it properly.
She thought about that word. Properly. She agreed with it. She also understood, in the way of someone who had spent a year watching her brothers navigate the world with the particular quality of people who are missing something foundational without knowing they're missing it, that properly would need to be soon.
The nightmare had been about losing them.
What she understood now — what the conversation with Rhubar and Sala had given her, unexpectedly — was that the two figures she couldn't resolve in the dream weren't a threat. They were the completion of something.
Her brothers were not going to be taken from her.
They were going to be found.
She decided that was enough for tonight and went to find Yang.
Part II — The Tablecloth Question
Location: Team RWBY's Dormitory | The Following Morning
Weiss Schnee arrived at Ruby's desk with the specific energy of someone who has been planning something and is now ready to begin executing it.
She set two squares of fabric on the table.
"I need you to pick a tablecloth," she said.
Ruby, who had been resting her chin on her hands and staring at something approximately twelve feet beyond the wall, blinked. She looked at the fabric.
"Aren't they both the same?" she said.
Weiss made a sound. "I don't even know why I asked."
She swept the samples up and walked away with the specific stride of someone who has been made to feel that their aesthetic sensibilities are operating at a frequency that others cannot perceive. Ruby watched her go and returned to her contemplation of the wall.
Yang arrived carrying a speaker system that would have presented a structural challenge for most people and a mild inconvenience for Yang. She set it down. The table bounced. Ruby briefly achieved altitude.
"So," Yang said, brushing her hands together, "have you picked out a dress yet?"
"No," Ruby said, returning to her previous state. "What's the point if Blake isn't going?"
"Oh, don't worry." Yang was already looking over Ruby's shoulder at something off-screen. "She's going." Then: "Weiss! I thought we agreed on no doilies!"
"If I don't get doilies, you don't get fog machines!" came the reply from off-screen.
"You're having fog machines?" a new voice asked.
Neptune Vasilias had arrived, apparently, while everyone was looking in other directions. Sun was with him, occupying approximately one and a half times the social space that one person normally occupied and currently engaged in a losing argument with his tie.
Daikon, who had come in behind them with his hands in his pockets and the expression of someone who had agreed to this outing for reasons he was currently reviewing, looked at Neptune and then at the space between Neptune and Weiss and arrived at a conclusion he kept to himself.
"We were thinking about it," Weiss said, turning to Neptune with the specific warmth she deployed for people she was attempting to make a good impression on.
"That's pretty cool," Neptune said.
"Warning: he's a player," Daikon said. "Don't say I didn't mention it."
Weiss turned on him. "And who—"
"Asked me? Nobody. I offered it freely as a public service."
Sun was still fighting the tie. "So ladies, you all excited for dress-up?"
"Pfft," Ruby said. "Yeah, right."
"I'll be turning heads tomorrow night," Yang said, with the confidence of a woman who has turned heads before and considers this a natural law rather than an achievement. Then, with the sly angle she used specifically for this: "And besides, Rubes — don't you want to look nice for someone?"
Ruby's expression did several things in rapid succession. "W-What? I — that's — what do you mean by that?"
"Nova," Weiss said, with the precision of someone inserting a scalpel. "Don't pretend you haven't been thinking about it."
"I haven't been thinking about—" Ruby's face had arrived at a color that conflicted with her usual palette. "I don't — it's not like that between us, I told you, it's—"
"The way he looks at you says it's something," Yang said.
"He looks at everyone like — he doesn't look at me—"
"Ruby." Yang's voice dropped into the gentle register. "He looks at you the way people look at things they don't want to stop looking at."
Ruby looked at her hands. The fight went out of the denial. "I don't know if he feels the same way," she said, which was a different sentence entirely from it's not like that.
"I'm pretty sure he does," Yang said.
"I bet he'd be pleasantly surprised to see you in a dress," Weiss said. She said it with the tone of someone making a tactical observation rather than a romantic suggestion, which somehow made it land more effectively.
Ruby smiled at the table. Small and private and not entirely controlled.
Sun had finally subdued the tie. He looked at the assembled faces. "So what does Blake think? She still being all... y'know... Blake-y?"
"That is kind of her thing," Daikon said.
"I can't figure out how to change her mind," Ruby said.
Yang stood. She had the specific posture of someone who has made a decision and is now going to execute it without explaining it first.
"Trust me," she said. "Blake will be at the dance."
She walked out.
The room absorbed this.
"I mean," Ruby said, after a moment. "She's not wrong. Yang usually isn't, about this stuff."
Weiss turned to her with the particular smile she used when she was about to say something she had been saving. "So, Ruby. Have you thought about asking him yet?"
Ruby's shoulders fell exactly one inch, which was the posture of someone who had been hoping this subject was finished.
Part III — The Laser and the Library
The library's ambient light was doing something kind with the late afternoon, turning the spaces between shelving into warm corridors and making the study tables feel more private than they were.
Blake sat at one of them and was not reading.
This had been the situation for approximately forty minutes. The text on the screen in front of her moved through her attention without leaving anything behind — words that she processed and immediately released, her mind giving them no purchase, occupied as it was with things she couldn't put down.
Then a small red dot appeared on the back of her hand.
She looked at it. It moved. She looked around the library. Nothing. She turned back to the screen and the dot was there again, making small circles.
She pressed her lips together.
It was a laser pointer. Someone was operating a laser pointer in the Beacon Academy library and directing it at the back of her hand, which was either a very specific prank or—
She stood, following the dot as it moved across the floor, down an aisle, around a corner—
Yang.
Yang was standing at the end of the aisle with the laser pointer in her right hand and her left raised in a wave.
"He-lloooo," Yang said, in the sing-song voice she used when she had already won and was simply waiting for the situation to catch up.
"What are you—"
Yang grabbed her arm.
"We need to talk."
The empty classroom had the quality of a room that had been chosen for this specific conversation, which meant Yang had thought about it in advance, which meant she was more serious about it than the laser pointer suggested.
Blake sat on one of the desks with her legs over the edge and her arms still crossed. Outside the windows, the afternoon was doing something orange.
"If you're here to tell me to stop the investigation—"
"I'm not," Yang said. She was sitting on the central desk with her legs folded, in the specific way she sat when she wanted to look casual and actually was. "I'm telling you to slow down."
"That's the same thing."
"It really isn't."
"Yang—"
"Blake." The casual posture stayed but the voice changed — acquired the quality it had when Yang was being real rather than performing real. "You're running yourself into the ground. You can't sleep. You're barely eating. And I can see from how you hold yourself that something specific is bothering you, and it isn't just Torchwick."
Blake looked at the window.
"I want to tell you something," Yang said. "And I need you to just listen, okay? Without running any kind of analysis on it."
"When have I ever—"
"All the time. You're doing it right now." Yang smiled, briefly. "Just listen."
She told her about Patch. About their father, and the missions, and Summer Rose who was super-mom and monster-slayer and who left for a mission one day and didn't come back. About the second loss, the first one — the mother Yang had never had, who had left her with her father as a newborn and disappeared entirely.
She told her about the young girl with pigtails who found what she thought was a clue and walked for hours through woods with her baby sister in a wagon, driven by the need to answer one question, and nearly got them both killed for it.
"My stubbornness and stupidity should have gotten us both killed that night," Yang said. "And here we are."
Blake looked at her. The evening had shifted while Yang was talking — the orange outside the windows going to something deeper.
"Yang," she said. "I know what you're saying. I understand the parallel you're drawing. But this isn't—"
"I know it's not the same," Yang said. "I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that I let one thing consume me to a point where I nearly cost Ruby her life before she was old enough to understand what danger was. And I'm asking you — please — don't let this consume you to that point. Not because the investigation doesn't matter. It does. But because you matter. And you're no use to anyone if you can't function."
Blake looked at her hands.
"I know you're strong enough to push through exhaustion," Yang continued. "I know you're capable of going further than most people on less than most people need. That's not the issue." She slid off the desk and crossed to stand in front of Blake. "The issue is that you're using the investigation as a reason not to deal with something else. And I think you know that."
A long silence.
"There's something else bothering you," Yang said. It wasn't a question.
Blake looked up at her. Then down again. Then, with the specific exhale of someone releasing something they've been holding:
"It's about Nova and Turuk."
Yang waited.
"They're not — they aren't who I thought they were," Blake said. "Or rather — they're exactly who I thought they were, but there's something I didn't know about them. Something I've recently found out." She paused. "Their real parents. I met them."
The room absorbed this.
"Okay," Yang said, after a moment. "Tell me what they're like."
"Understanding," Blake said. "Genuinely. They — they care. More than I expected." She paused. "You'll be surprised when I tell you who they are. But I need you to promise you won't tell anyone else. If this gets out, there'll be panic."
Yang looked at her steadily. "I promise."
Blake told her.
Yang's expression did several things in the specific order of someone receiving information that is simultaneously surprising, meaningful, and complicated.
She was very quiet for a moment when Blake finished.
"All this time," she said.
"All this time," Blake agreed.
"Do they know?"
"Nova and Turuk? No. Not yet." Blake looked at her hands. "And they won't, until Rhubar and Sala are ready to tell them. That's not our decision to make."
Yang was quiet for another moment. Then: "Are you okay?"
"I don't know yet," Blake said. "I think I will be."
"Okay," Yang said. "That's an honest answer." She let the silence sit for a moment, then: "Come to the dance."
Blake looked at her.
"Not because it'll fix anything," Yang said. "Just because you don't have to process all of this alone in a library tonight. Come to the dance. One night. And we'll be there."
Blake was quiet for a long time.
"You said you'd save me a dance," she said.
"I will."
"One night," Blake said. "And then Monday we go back to work."
Yang smiled. "Deal."
Part IV — Jaune and the Advice He Gave
Location: Team JNPR's Dormitory | That Evening
The conversation Jaune had been trying to have with Ren had not gone the way either of them had expected.
Ren had spent most of it making sustained eye contact with his outfit, which was hanging by the door at a distance he was not able to close, and Nora had spent most of it reading with a very practiced expression of I am completely in my own world and not listening to any of this. Jaune had spent it on his bed, in his towel, being honest in the way that people are honest when they've run out of other options.
He talked about Weiss, which Ren received with the specific kindness of someone who has understood a thing completely and is choosing the right moment to say so.
Pyrrha appeared in the doorway at the end of it.
"Then do it," she said.
Jaune startled. "P-Pyrrha?"
"Tell her exactly what you said." She crossed to them. "No schemes. No pick-up lines. Just the truth."
"But what if I—"
"You can't get it wrong if it's the truth," she said, and smiled at him, and the smile was the genuine one — the one that had nothing to do with performance or pedestals or the weight of being Pyrrha Nikos. Just the smile of someone who was glad to be where she was, with the people she was with.
"You're right," Jaune said, and stood, newly energized. "Good talk, Ren!"
Ren waved.
The door closed.
Pyrrha crossed to her desk and sat down, and the energy that had been present in her expression for that moment rearranged itself back into something quieter.
Nora looked at her. The book was still open. The headphones were still on. But Nora was watching Pyrrha with the specific attention of someone who has been aware of something for a long time and is waiting for the person to be ready to talk about it.
"Practice what you preach," Nora said, quietly.
Pyrrha exhaled.
She looked at the door for a moment.
Then she said, "I know," and looked at her desk, and the evening continued around her.
Part V — Cinder's List
Location: A Dormitory Room, Beacon Academy | That Night
The room was quiet in the particular way of a space where three people are present and two of them are thinking.
Cinder was sewing. The needle moved through black fabric with precise economy, and the quality of her focus was something that had always existed prior to whatever was being sewn — she simply brought it with her when she worked.
Emerald was cross-legged on the floor with her scroll. Mercury was lying on his back with a comic held above his face, which was either reading or an extremely committed performance of appearing to read.
"Pyrrha Nikos," Emerald said.
"The invincible girl," Cinder said.
"She hides how she wins. The polarity semblance — contact with metal, subtle adjustments. Most opponents don't understand what's happening until the match is already over."
"It's never about overpowering," Cinder said. "It's about taking away the power they have. Add her to the list."
A pause.
"Her friend is a different situation," Mercury said, from behind the comic.
Cinder looked at him.
"Scarlett Reinhardt," he said. "I forfeited the match today."
Emerald raised an eyebrow. "You forfeited."
"I assessed the situation and made a strategic decision," Mercury said, which was technically accurate and entirely understood by everyone in the room for what it was. "The point is she doesn't fight like anyone from Remnant. The power output, the technique, the way she handles force. It's a different system entirely."
"Everything interesting has a weakness," Cinder said, without particular concern.
"Sure," Mercury said. "I'm just noting that we haven't found hers yet."
He went back to the comic. Or continued performing reading. The distinction wasn't clear.
Emerald watched him.
He had been distracted again — the quality of absence that she'd been watching for three weeks, the pauses that appeared in the wrong places, the moments where he was physically present and clearly somewhere else. She had tried to ask. He kept saying fine.
She wrote Scarlett Reinhardt — note in her scroll with a small asterisk and did not ask again tonight.
Part VI — The Dance
Location: Beacon Academy Ballroom | That Evening
The ballroom had been transformed with the specific ambition of two people — one of whom had opinions about tablecloths and one of whom had opinions about fog machines, and who had arrived at a compromise that resulted in white-clothed tables beneath crystal chandeliers threaded with streamers, balloons in blue and pink arranged throughout, and a dance floor that was filling with students in their best approximation of formal.
Yang stood at the entrance podium in a short white dress and black heels, which was an approximation of formal that managed to simultaneously comply with the dress code and look entirely like Yang.
The doors opened.
She made a sound that was not quite a word.
Ruby was in a red dress with black lace and matching pumps, her dark hair loose around her shoulders instead of its usual twin-tails, and she was moving with the specific careful concentration of someone who has not made friends with heels yet and is working on it.
"You look beautiful," Yang cooed.
"Can we have a serious conversation about how Weiss fights in these?" Ruby said, wobbling.
She wobbled too far.
A pair of hands caught her.
"Careful," Nova said.
Ruby looked up.
He was in a dark blue blazer over a white shirt, a red tie, dress pants, and shoes that suggested someone had thought about this. His normally assertive hair was combed back into something that could be called controlled, which was different enough from its usual state that it took Ruby a moment to adjust. He smelled like something she did not immediately have a category for except very good.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Y-Yeah," Ruby said. "I — yes. Thank you."
She was very aware of his hands. Then she was very aware that she was aware of his hands, which made the whole situation more complicated.
"You look—" He stopped. Cleared his throat. She recognized the specific sound of Nova Belladonna being briefly uncertain, which was rare enough to be significant. "You look really nice, Ruby."
Ruby's face arrived at the color it was arriving at with increasing frequency around this specific person.
Yang, watching from the podium, was composing an expression that was technically restrained but contained multitudes.
"I'll go ahead," Yang said, to no one in particular, and walked past them. "She's all yours tonight, Nova. Take care of my little sister."
"I intend to," he said.
"Then I won't worry," Yang said, already past them.
Nova looked at Ruby. Extended his hand with the small bow that he performed when he was being formal about something.
"Would you honor me with this dance?" he said, which Ruby would later analyze as the most straightforwardly gallant thing anyone had ever said to her.
"I would be glad to," she said, and took his hand.
Outside, Sun was still fighting the tie.
"Stupid—dumb—neck—trap—"
"I knew you'd look better in a tie."
Blake stepped forward.
She was in a dark purple dress and violet eyeshadow that replaced the usual dark circles, and Sun looked at her with the specific expression of someone who has been trying to take a photo and has discovered the subject is considerably more complicated than the frame.
"Does this mean we're going together?" he asked.
"Technically," Blake said. "Though my first dance is spoken for."
She held her arm out.
He offered his.
They went in.
Inside the ballroom:
Yang in white, spinning Blake on the dance floor before stepping aside for Sun with a grin. Yang and Blake curtsied to each other in the specific shorthand of people who have been through something together, and then Yang stepped back to the edge of the room where Weiss was standing.
Weiss, in a white dress that had a different quality than Yang's — more structured, more considered — was looking at the dance floor with the expression of someone who had planned to have a better evening than this and was revising the night's trajectory in real time.
Neptune was not with her. Had not been with her. A wilting white rose on the table beside her told a story that was currently making the table's immediate vicinity slightly melancholy.
"Mission accomplished," Weiss said, watching Blake laugh.
"I told you she'd come," Yang said.
"What do we do now?" Aiko asked, from Yang's other side.
"Have fun," Yang said, already scanning the room.
Her eyes found Turuk at the other end of the ballroom.
He was in a black blazer and a dark blue shirt, hair combed back with the specific unfamiliarity of a person who does not usually present this way and is navigating the novelty of it. He found her at the same moment she found him and the smirk that arrived on his face was, she decided, one of the better things she had seen all evening.
She crossed the room.
"You waited," he said.
"You showed up," she said. "So it worked out." She took his arm. "And you look good, by the way. Very good."
"You mentioned that," he said.
"I'm elaborating."
"Yang," he said, amused.
"Turuk," she said. "Dance with me."
He offered his arm formally, with the bow that his brother also used, which she had decided was a quality she found specifically appealing.
"It would be my pleasure," he said.
She grinned.
They went to the dance floor.
Scarlett Reinhardt in violet was dancing with Yatsuhashi Daichi in standard formal, and neither of them was saying very much, and both of them were fine with this.
"I'm glad you came," she said.
"I wouldn't have come if you hadn't asked me," he said.
"There must have been other people who asked."
"There were." He looked at her. "I was waiting to see if you would."
She raised an eyebrow. "Were you."
"You're the most interesting person I've met here," he said. "When people interest me, I wait."
Scarlett looked at him for a moment.
"What happens after Beacon?" she asked.
He thought about it. "I'll see where my team goes. But I think I'd rather be where you are." A pause. "If that's acceptable."
"That's very acceptable, Yatsu," she said.
They danced.
Aiko was standing at the edge of the room with the specific uncertainty of someone who has arrived at a party where everyone else seems to know what they're doing and has not yet found her role in it. The headmaster materialized at her elbow with the low-key inevitability of a man who moves through rooms at his own pace.
"Not enjoying yourself?" Ozpin asked.
"I — no, everything is fine. I just don't know what I should do now." She glanced at her teammates on the dance floor. "Everyone else seems to have it figured out."
Ozpin looked at the room. "Nights like these," he said, "aren't about having it figured out. They're about the fact that you're here, with people who matter to you, and for one evening the world has stepped back to let you be that." He paused. "That's the value. Not the dancing."
Aiko considered this.
She went and sat beside Daikon, who was at the edge of the room with his arms crossed, watching the couples with an expression that was doing significant work to look like indifference.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"Neptune showed up," he said. "With the princess. He's there, she's here—" He stopped. "I can't figure out whether I'm annoyed or relieved."
Aiko looked at Weiss, who was sitting alone by her wilting flower.
"She's been alone the whole night," Aiko said. "I think she'd appreciate someone going over there."
Daikon looked at the flower. At Weiss. At the distance between them.
"Yeah," he said, after a moment. "You're probably right."
He uncrossed his arms. Stood. Looked at Aiko.
"Thanks," he said.
She watched him go and sat alone for a moment, which was fine. Then Neptune Vasilias appeared, sat beside her, and said: "Okay, I'm going to be completely honest with you. I cannot dance. Not even a little bit. But I was told that being honest was better than being cool."
Aiko looked at him.
"Who told you that?"
"Jaune. So, consider the source."
"He's not wrong, actually," Aiko said, with the careful consideration she gave most things.
"You don't dance either?"
"Not very well."
"Then we're in exactly the same position," Neptune said. "We could just sit here and watch everyone else make it look easy."
Aiko thought about this.
"That seems manageable," she said.
They sat and watched and talked about things that were easier than dancing, and it was, if not spectacular, specifically fine.
Daikon crossed the ballroom with the specific directness he brought to things he had decided to do.
Weiss Schnee was sitting with a wilting rose and the particular expression of someone who is performing the appearance of not minding when they are in fact minding quite a lot. She had the dress and the posture and the evening and no one to spend them with, and the white rose was making an editorial comment that she was choosing not to acknowledge.
He stopped in front of her.
She looked up. Her expression prepared itself for an argument.
He extended his hand.
"Since that fool Neptune isn't here," he said, "and since you clearly want to dance—" He stopped. Started again. "Look. I'm not very good at making this sound like what it is, which is just me wanting to dance with you. No ulterior motive. No performance. Just—" He cleared his throat. "A princess shouldn't have to spend the dance alone. That much I'm sure of."
Weiss looked at his hand.
She looked at his face.
"If you're doing this out of pity—"
"I'm doing it because I want to," he said. "And I don't do things I don't want to do."
A silence.
She took his hand.
Something in the room shifted, in the small way that things shift when two people who have been sparring at close range for months finally stand still and face the same direction.
"Fine," she said. "But only because you asked properly."
"I'll take it," he said.
They moved to the floor, and she discovered that Daikon — who fought like the earth had opinions and expressed them loudly — danced with a surprising amount of patience, which was somehow the most unexpected thing about him that she had encountered yet.
"What made you come over?" she asked.
"I overheard Jaune," he said. "And I saw you alone. Two pieces of information that combine into one obvious conclusion." A pause. "Jaune may be a fool, but he's an honest one. That's something worth paying attention to."
She looked at him. "Are you calling yourself honest?"
"I'm calling myself someone who's learning it," he said.
She processed this.
"You can still call me princess," she said, which was a concession she would later claim to have made ironically. "But only you. And only here."
He looked at her.
"Music to my ears," he said.
She turned away so he couldn't see the smile, which arrived anyway.
Ruby and Nova were on the second dance, which had followed the first one organically, the way second dances do when the first one was good.
"I almost didn't come tonight," Nova said.
"Why?" Ruby asked. She genuinely wanted to know — she had been thinking about who else might have asked him, and had been managing the thought in the specific way she managed things she didn't want to examine too directly.
"Most of the people here don't know what to do with me," he said. "I don't blame them for that. Faunus from outside the kingdoms, unusual fighting style, don't talk much. I'm aware it's an unusual configuration."
Ruby looked up at him. "Those girls don't know what they're missing," she said, which was not a calculated statement — it was simply the first thing that came out, which was usually the truest thing with her.
He went to say something.
She put a finger to his lips.
He stopped, in the specific way of someone who had not expected that and was now genuinely waiting.
"I'm not done," she said. "You're kind. You're loyal. You're considerate of people in a way that doesn't make a production of itself. You're funny when you're not trying to be, which is the best kind. And every day I've spent around you has been—" She stopped. Found the word. "More. Every day has been more than the day before it."
She took her finger away.
He looked at her for a moment — the long, careful look that was specifically his.
"Thank you," he said. "I think I needed to hear that."
"I think you know exactly what to say when I need to hear something," she said. "I wanted to return the favor."
He smiled — the real one.
She smiled back, and the warmth that had been visiting her chest for a year arrived with more confidence than usual and declined to leave.
Later, the room quieted slightly as the music changed register, and Jaune Arc appeared at the refreshments table in a white dress with a blue ribbon.
There was a specific quality to the moment when Pyrrha Nikos saw him — the expression that moved through her face when she was trying not to laugh and discovering she could not manage it.
"Jaune!" She was laughing openly. "You didn't have to—"
"An Arc never goes back on his word," he said, with the specific dignity of a man in a dress choosing his battles. "Now do you want to stand there laughing at me, or do you want to dance?"
She was still laughing when she offered her hand.
He swept her onto the floor with considerably more confidence than she had been prepared for, and she made a sound of genuine surprise, and from across the room Nora Valkyrie grabbed Ren by the arm and vibrated with the energy of someone who has been waiting for this for months.
"Ren. This. Is. Happening."
"What is happening?" Ren asked, to the room.
He was pulled onto the floor before the question could be answered.
Part VII — The Tower
Location: The Cross-Continental Transmit Tower | Later That Night
Ruby had gone out for air.
This was true. She had also, while getting air, happened to look in a direction that led her to notice a figure moving along the rooftops with a quality of motion that did not correspond to any student she could place.
She pulled her scroll.
A hand appeared on her shoulder.
She startled. Turned.
Nova was there, in the casual aftermath of someone who had followed her from the ballroom out of the specific habit of keeping track of where she was when things were happening.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to startle you."
"You keep doing that," she said, which was true and also somewhat fond.
"I keep showing up when you're about to do something without backup," he said. "The two things are related."
She showed him the direction of the rooftop figure.
He looked. Came to the same conclusion she had in approximately two seconds.
"Your locker code," he said. "In case it gets complicated."
"Already ahead of you," she said, entering the six digits.
The locker arrived. She took Crescent Rose, collapsed it to fit behind her back, and looked at him.
He nodded.
They went.
The CCT tower had the specific quality of a building that has been comprehensively entered by someone who knew what they were doing. The guards were down before the first floor. The elevator held two more, unconscious and confused about their recent experience.
On the operations floor, the monitors were doing something they were not supposed to be doing.
Cinder Fall was not expecting two students to step out of the elevator.
She recovered faster than most people would have, which was information about her. She produced dust from her belt and shaped it into glass shards with the specific ease of someone who had done this before, and launched them.
Nova's kiai dispersed the cloud before it reached Ruby.
"Stay away from her," he said. It was not a dramatic announcement. It was a statement of intent delivered in a register that had nothing performative about it.
What followed was brief and gave everyone involved information.
Cinder fought with the precise economy of someone who had been doing this for a long time and had organized her technique around the principle of efficiency rather than power — she didn't try to overpower, she tried to redirect, to find the angles that created problems rather than the forces that created damage. Against most opponents this was comprehensively effective.
Against Nova it was considerably less effective, because he had the specific quality of someone who had been trained by a person who thought in terms of ki rather than semblance, and the framework was different enough that her reads were consistently one step off.
Against Ruby it was also less effective than she had anticipated, because Ruby's ki — nascent, still new to the directed application of it — produced orbs of golden light that expanded on impact rather than on contact, which meant that what looked like a miss was sometimes not a miss.
Cinder noted all of this.
She also noted, in the way she noted everything, the specific texture of the young man's power — the way it moved when he committed to something, the sense of something considerably deeper behind what was being shown. She had seen exceptional people before. This was a different category of exceptional, and she was filing it accordingly.
The elevator arrived.
She left through the service exit, and the young man was checking on the young woman with silver eyes, and neither of them had seen her go.
She changed in the corridor, and walked back into the dance, and was dancing with Mercury when he asked how her night had been.
"A little more exciting than expected," she said.
"Should we be worried?"
"Hardly," she said. "They'll be scratching their heads long after we finished what we came here to do."
On a monitor somewhere above them, a queen chess piece appeared on a screen.
Part VIII — The Second Dance
Location: Beacon Academy Ballroom | Later
Ruby and Nova came back through the ballroom doors into the warmth and light of the dance, both slightly off their formal posture and both pretending not to be.
Ironwood had met them at the tower and been briefed, and had sent them back with the specific air of someone who considered the matter handled and did not want to discuss the fact that it had happened at a school dance.
The music was still going.
People were still dancing.
Someone — several someones — noticed them walk in, and there was a quality to the noticing that Ruby registered without being entirely sure what to do with it.
Nova extended his hand again.
"Shall we?" he said.
She looked at him. At the room. At the specific situation of being looked at by a room full of people she knew, while wearing a red dress and standing next to someone she was fairly certain she had stopped pretending not to have feelings for.
"Yes," she said.
She took his hand.
The room made a collective sound that was small and involuntary and genuine.
Across the dance floor, Yang caught Turuk's eye and they both looked at the same thing at the same time — Ruby, laughing at something Nova had said, her hand in his, moving into the music with the ease of someone who has forgotten to be self-conscious.
"You know what?" Yang said.
"What?" Turuk said.
"I think we really needed this."
"Yeah," he said. "I think we did."
She leaned into him slightly, in the easy way of someone who has decided they're exactly where they want to be.
He looked at her.
"Yang," he said.
She looked back.
"Thank you," he said. "For—" He searched for the right thing. "For being you about everything. It's not always easy to know how to respond to you and I think that means you're doing something right."
Yang looked at him for a moment.
Then she kissed him on the cheek.
His eyes went wide.
"Consider that a down payment," she said, which was technically what she said, but the quality of her voice when she said it was something that landed considerably differently than the words, and Turuk spent the next several minutes in the specific condition of someone who has just been given new information about their own feelings and is working through the implications.
"Yang," he said finally.
"Turuk," she said.
"Are you serious? About — about this?"
"I have been for a while," she said. "I just wanted you to catch up."
He looked at her.
"I think I've caught up," he said.
She smiled, and it was the real one, the one behind all the others.
Outside, above the ballroom, the moon over Beacon was full and clear, and the lights of Vale stretched below the academy in every direction, and on a monitor in a room that no one was watching a chess piece waited on the screen with the patience of something that is certain of its own eventual significance.
And in the ballroom, in the warmth and the music and the specifically ordinary magic of one good evening before everything complicated again, seventeen young people danced.
★ END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN ★
Next: Chapter Fifteen — "Field Trip and Origins, Part I"
Hey guys, hopefully you enjoyed this chapter! I sprinkled in some bonding moments with each pairing even though this chapter was heavily focused on Nova and Ruby there towards the end.
And no, Aiko won't end up with Neptune. That was just so she would have something to do as I hate it when characters have absolutely nothing to do. Plus, I feel as though Aiko would feel a little out of place while watching her friends all dancing by herself.
Turuk x Yang will have more development in an upcoming mission, same with Daikon x Weiss. We are getting closer to the end of volume 2 though, Nova and Ruby are gradually getting closer they just need one more nudge to become official. I'll leave a pairing poll below:
Who will end up as a couple first?
1. Nova/Ruby
2. Turuk/Yang
3. Scarlett/Yatsuhashi
4. Jaune/Pyrrha
5. Ren/Nora
Let me know what you guys think. Anyways that's all for now! Hope you guys enjoyed it! Plz comment who the first official pairing for this story will be based on your estimates. I'll see you guys in the next update!