Hey guys, RoseSaiyan2 here again! Hopefully you guys liked the last chapter. Welp, here we are! We're getting to the point where Ruby has to confess to Nova or she'll go crazy, but we'll just see what happens in this chapter... not spoiling anything lol.
I don't own dbz/kai/dbs or Rwby and their characters. Those are the property of Akira Toriyama/Toei Animation and Rooster Teeth/Monty Oum respectively. The characters of Tarro and Daikon are owned by my friend ComparedDreadx.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN :Search and Destroy: Ruby Confronts Her Feelings
Part I — The Arrival
Location: Beacon Cliffside Docks | Morning
The expression on Ruby Rose's face cycled through surprise, confusion, and something that was approximately equal parts embarrassed and pleased, in the specific order of someone who has just realized she has been kept out of a plan that involved her directly.
Nova rubbed the back of his head.
Turuk offered a two-finger salute.
"Yo," Turuk said.
"What the—" Ruby looked at Nova. Then at Turuk. Then at Nova again. "You two—how did you—when did—"
"I was asked not to tell you ahead of time," Nova said. "I apologize for that. I'll explain everything on the way."
Weiss had already arrived at a position. "You had better have an extremely good explanation for this."
"We have a good one," Turuk said. "Whether it's extremely good depends on your standards."
"My standards are high."
"Then we'll aim for that."
Blake had been watching her brothers with the expression she wore when she was experiencing something she had expected and was still feeling the weight of it. She couldn't be angry at them for this. She had never quite managed to be angry at them for anything they genuinely intended for good reasons, which was an inconvenient quality in siblings.
"I trust you both to explain it properly," she said. "On the way."
Yang said nothing. She just looked at Turuk with the sly, specific smile she used for situations she found specifically satisfying.
"Glad you're here," she said.
"Thanks," he said, which came with a very slightly elevated temperature in the back of his neck that he was managing with composure.
"Very glad," she said.
"Yang," he said.
"Very," she said.
Oobleck materialized from the direction of the airship at a speed that suggested he had been moving for some time and had simply chosen now to become visible. He assessed the assembled group with the professional efficiency of a man who has an appointment and views deviation from the schedule as a personal affront.
"Now that everyone is present," he said, "we can—" He paused. He looked at everyone. "Is everyone present? There appear to be six of you. I was told to expect six."
"You were told correctly," Nova said.
"Excellent. Then we are four minutes behind schedule, which is precisely the kind of inefficiency that—"
He was already moving.
They moved with him.
Part II — Explanations
Location: Airship, Outbound | Shortly After
The airship climbed away from Beacon with the efficient indifference of public transportation, which had no opinions about what happened in the seats.
The explanation, when it came, was methodical. Nova laid it out without unnecessary detail: the secondary mission from Ozpin, the request from Glynda, the reasoning that team RWBY's proximity to the investigation made their own team's proximity useful.
Weiss, who had been processing this with the specific expression of someone who objects to a conclusion they cannot argue with, said: "In other words, you're here to monitor us."
"We're here to assist," Turuk said. "If needed. The mission is yours."
"It's the same thing dressed differently."
"It really isn't," Nova said. "We won't be directing anything. We'll be present. If something goes beyond what the situation calls for—which, given that we're investigating a criminal operation in an abandoned city, seems statistically probable—we're there."
"You could have mentioned this earlier," Weiss said. "To Ruby. You had several opportunities."
"I was asked not to," Nova said. "I disagreed with the timing but agreed to the instruction because the people who gave it had their reasons."
Weiss looked at him for a moment with the evaluating attention of someone running an assessment.
"Fine," she said, which from Weiss was not nothing.
Oobleck appeared at the front of the cabin. "About your earlier question, Miss Xiao Long—"
Yang had turned to ask the professor something about his combat record. The conversation found its footing and moved forward.
Nova settled back.
Ruby, beside him, had her gaze on the window — on the city falling away below them, on the transition from Vale's organized geometry to the terrain south of it, which had a different quality. Less maintained. Less certain.
"You said you'd explain," she said, quietly enough that it was between them.
"I did," he said. "And I have."
"The whole explanation? That's all of it?"
He looked at her sideways. "What else do you think there is?"
"You specifically volunteered," she said. "Not your whole team. You and Turuk."
"The others were needed elsewhere."
"Nova."
He exhaled. "I wanted to be here," he said. "For this mission specifically. I didn't like the idea of you going into Mountain Glenn with only—" He stopped. "I wanted to be there. That's the honest part of it."
She looked at the window.
"Okay," she said.
He looked at her.
"Okay," she said again, softer.
The landscape below them had begun its transition to something more serious.
Oobleck had strong opinions about Brussels sprouts. Yang had asked a question about edible plants found in mountain regions, which had led him through truffles and then to the following exchange:
"Like the mushroom?" Ruby asked, tilting her head at the mention of his surname.
"Those are truffles."
"Like the sprout?"
"Those are Brussels, Rubes," Yang said.
"Miss Rose," Oobleck said, appearing directly before her, "it is Doctor Oobleck. I did not earn a PhD by accident, and I would appreciate the distinction—" He was already moving. "Now, to your question about the southeast quadrant—"
Nova and Turuk exchanged a look.
"Does he always—" Turuk started.
"Yes," Blake said.
"And people just—"
"You get used to it," Yang said.
"The southeast quadrant," Oobleck continued from the front of the cabin, "is of particular historical interest because it encompasses the site of one of Vale's most significant urban failures. The expansion district — which many of you know by its more colloquial designation—"
"Mountain Glenn," Ruby said.
Oobleck stopped.
He turned.
"Very good, Miss Rose. The city that was promised, overrun, abandoned, and sealed. And now, it appears, repurposed." He took a long sip from his thermos. "Which is either very clever or very stupid, and I suspect the former."
"A hideout," Blake said.
"Precisely," he said. "And a well-chosen one. The emotional residue of a failed city — the despair embedded in its history — would naturally attract grimm. Which serves as both a deterrent for anyone investigating and a resource for anyone using that emotional concentration deliberately."
Nova thought about this. "They're using the grimm population as a perimeter defense."
Oobleck pointed at him. "Someone has been paying attention. Yes."
"That's—" Ruby paused. "That's actually really smart."
"It is," Oobleck agreed. "Which means whoever planned it is not to be underestimated." He turned back to the forward window. "Which in turn means that all of you should be prepared to be underestimated by them. They will not expect students. Use it."
Part III — Mountain Glenn
Location: Mountain Glenn | Midday
The airship released them into the silence of a city that had stopped breathing.
Mountain Glenn had been designed with optimism — wide streets, substantial buildings, the infrastructure of a place that had been intended to grow. What remained of that design was visible in the bones of the place: the proportions were still there, the grid still suggested itself through the overgrowth and decay, but everything that had been built on that foundation had been reduced to a study in what happened when grimm and time and abandonment worked together on something that had once been intended to endure.
The airship climbed away and left them in the specific quiet of seven people and one dog.
Oobleck landed with the unhurried certainty of someone for whom terrain is information rather than obstacle. He looked at the group.
"As of this moment," he said, "your first genuine huntsman mission has begun. I expect you to conduct yourselves accordingly." He looked at Ruby. "Miss Rose. Your bag."
"Oh, uh—"
"I specifically said—"
"You hadn't told us to listen to you yet when I packed it," Ruby said, which was technically accurate. "So I—"
"Leave it here," he said. "We'll collect it on return."
"But there's—"
Nova's voice appeared in her mind with the quiet precision of the mental link: Ruby. Do as he says.
But Nova—
What's the worst that happens? He finds Zwei? At which point he can't exactly leave the dog out here. A pause. I'll back you up where I can, but this one you have to do.
...You're very annoying when you're right.
I know.
She set the bag down.
The zipper opened.
Zwei's head emerged.
The silence extended.
"Young lady," Oobleck said, "what in the world—"
"I can explain—"
"A dog," he said. He looked at Zwei. Zwei looked at him. Something moved behind Oobleck's opaque glasses — consideration, then something that resolved into an expression the team had not expected.
"Genius."
He swept past Ruby and collected Zwei from the bag, spinning the corgi into the air with the focused enthusiasm of a man who has just received unexpected assistance. Zwei barked with unalloyed joy at being the center of attention.
"Canines have been used in hunting and tracking since the earliest recorded periods of human history! Heightened auditory range, olfactory sensitivity in excess of three hundred times the human baseline — this animal is exactly what this environment requires!"
Nova stared.
Turuk stared.
"I'm..." Turuk said.
"Lost," Nova finished.
"Same," said Ruby, who had gone from nervous to baffled in approximately four seconds. Then she registered the result and said: "I'm a genius."
Yang and Weiss both pressed their hands to their respective foreheads.
"Right," Oobleck said, producing his thermos and taking a very long sip. "Shall we begin?"
Part IV — The Method of Doctor Oobleck
They fought grimm.
This was the honest summary of the next several hours, stripped of the transitions between encounters and the increasingly elaborate expressions of Oobleck's running historical commentary, which accompanied each location with the enthusiasm of a man who had been waiting a very long time to provide this specific tour to a captive audience.
The grimm came. The team dispatched them. Oobleck observed, occasionally, from an elevated position while making notes in his journal, and occasionally moved with the speed and efficiency of someone who could have been fighting the entire time and had simply chosen not to in order to let the students demonstrate their capabilities.
Ruby noticed this.
"Hey, Doc — have you considered helping?" Yang asked, after the third encounter.
"I have considered it extensively," Oobleck said. "I've determined that observation is more valuable in this moment."
"More valuable to who?"
"To my assessment of your team's capabilities. Which will inform how I advise the headmaster on your readiness for more substantial assignments." He took a sip. "You're performing adequately."
"Adequately," Yang repeated.
"The word means what it means," he said, and was already moving.
Yang looked at Turuk.
Turuk looked at her. "He's not wrong about the assessment part," he said. "That is genuinely useful information."
"You could have not said that."
"I could have," he agreed.
"Then why—"
"Because you asked, and I don't like answering questions inaccurately."
She looked at him.
"You're the most straightforward person I have ever met," she said.
"I've been told," he said.
She almost smiled. Then she did smile. Then she went back to the encounter with the efficiency of someone who finds that specific smile is better deployed and then moved past.
Between encounters, Oobleck asked his questions.
He asked Yang first, drawing her away from the group under the pretense of examining something in the ruins, asking it in the specific way of someone who wanted the answer before he asked it but was collecting confirmation:
"Why did you choose this line of work? The honest reason."
Yang thought about it — genuinely, which was the kind of thinking she didn't always show. "The honest reason? I'm a thrill-seeker. I want to travel, see everything, do the crazy things. And if I help people while I'm doing it — that's even better. Everyone wins."
Oobleck looked at her steadily. "Mm," he said, which was not dismissal. It was a sound that meant I have received the answer and I am considering it, which was different.
He asked Weiss while she was catching her breath from a sequence that had put her through her technical paces.
"You have resources available that would preclude the need for this work. Why choose it?"
Weiss sheathed her rapier with the specific click of someone settling a decision. "I'm a Schnee. There is a legacy to uphold. When I realized I was capable of contributing to that legacy through combat, there was no longer a question." A pause. "It is my duty."
He looked at her for a moment. "Interesting," he said, which also meant I have received the answer and I am not entirely satisfied with it.
He asked Blake while she was examining a doorway that had recently been the entry point for a number of small nevermores.
"You carry yourself with a sense of purpose," he said. "What is it directed toward?"
Blake looked at the doorway. "My brothers, first. They're my family, and family looks after each other." She was quiet for a moment. "And there's too much wrong in the world to pretend you haven't seen it. Inequality. Corruption. If you have the capability to address those things—"
"How?" he asked.
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
"I..." She found that the sentence had a shape but no conclusion she could identify cleanly.
Oobleck "hmm'd" and moved on, leaving Blake with the specific discomfort of a question she hadn't known she couldn't answer until it was asked.
Nova and Turuk were asked their question by a different method.
It came in the evening, around the campfire that had been established in the most defensible structure they'd found — large enough to hold the group, solid enough to suggest security, ruined enough that the Grimm had already picked it over and found nothing worth returning to.
Oobleck had settled somewhere above them and was writing. The question came down over the railing: "And you two? What's the honest answer?"
Nova and Turuk looked at each other.
"We define what a huntsman is a little differently," Turuk said. "Less as a title, more as a... direction."
"We want to become strong enough to protect the things that matter," Nova said. "The people. The ones we care about. The ones who can't protect themselves." He looked at the fire. "There's also the honest part that we want to understand our own limits. We've never really known what our ceiling is. This world — this way of doing things — it challenges us in ways that help us find out."
"And if you find your ceiling?" Oobleck asked.
"Then we blow past it," Turuk said.
A pause from above them.
"And helping people in the process?"
"That's not a consequence," Nova said. "That's the point. The strength is for something. If it's not for something, it doesn't mean anything."
A longer pause.
"Very good," Oobleck said, which was the first time he had used that specific phrase all day, and everyone at the campfire noticed the distinction.
Part V — First Watch
Location: Mountain Glenn | That Night
Oobleck sent them to camp and took Ruby with him to secure the perimeter, which was how Ruby found herself standing on a broken terrace looking at a procession of Goliath grimm moving through the ruined forest below — ancient things, armored in the way of creatures that had survived long enough to become something more than just dangerous.
"They're huge," she said.
"They are," Oobleck agreed.
"What are they doing?"
"Waiting," he said.
She looked at the nearest one — at the red eyes sweeping upward toward the terrace for a moment, assessing, and then moving on with the unhurried certainty of something that had already decided this was not the threat it was monitoring for.
"Waiting for what?"
"For the walls to break," he said. "They've learned. Grimm of this age — this size — they've been alive long enough to understand that attacking a defended position is inefficient. So they wait. They accumulate. They watch the human settlements for the signs that the defense is weakening." He walked beside her. "That's why what's happening with the dust supply matters. Not just as a tactical disruption. As a signal. If the lights start going out — if the walls become uncertain — these creatures will know before we do."
Ruby looked at the procession in the darkness below.
"So the dust robberies are telling them when to move," she said.
"Not telling them," he said. "Creating the conditions. Grimm don't communicate the way we do. They respond to what they feel — the emotional and psychological state of the human population. When that state shifts toward despair and fear, they respond accordingly." He paused. "Which is why the plan — whatever it is — isn't just about causing immediate damage. It's about changing what the grimm feel coming from the kingdom. About inviting them in."
Ruby was quiet for a long moment.
"Who plans something like that?" she said.
Oobleck looked at her. At the specific quality of the question — not rhetorical, genuinely asked, genuinely wondering.
"Someone who understands how this world works," he said. "At a level most people would prefer not to examine."
They were walking back toward the building.
"Doctor Oobleck," she said.
"Hmm?"
"Why did you become a Huntsman?" She said it simply, without the weight of an accusation or the lightness of curiosity — just the honest question, aimed at him the way he had aimed his at the others.
He stopped.
He looked at her.
Then he looked at the ruins around them — the wide streets and the hollow windows and the emptiness that had once been full of the ordinary noise of people living their lives.
"I see lives that could have been saved," he said.
She listened.
"As a teacher, I take the most powerful weapon in existence — knowledge — and place it in the hands of every student who passes through my classroom. I look at this wasteland and I see an opportunity to learn what went wrong and become stronger for knowing it." He paused. "I am a Huntsman because there is nothing else I would rather be."
He moved toward the building.
She followed.
Zwei padded alongside her, and the Goliaths moved in the darkness below, and the night was very old and very large and completely indifferent to the specific conversation that had just happened in it.
Part VI — What the Others Were Thinking
Location: The Building | That Same Night
The fire was going.
Yang, Blake, Weiss, Turuk, and Nova had been sitting around it with the easy silence of people who had spent a significant day together and had arrived at the place past effort where just existing in the same space was sufficient.
"I can't believe we didn't find anything," Yang said, to the fire.
"We've always been in the right place at the right time," Blake said. "We can't expect that to be permanent."
"That's not what I meant," Weiss said.
They looked at her.
"Earlier — when Oobleck asked us—" She paused, organizing it. "I said it was duty. And that's true. But it's not the whole truth." She looked at her hands. "It's also because — there are things in this world that are broken. And the Schnee name is connected to some of those broken things in ways I don't yet know how to address directly. Being a huntress is — it's the one thing I'm certain I can do that is unambiguously good. Without the name. Without the inheritance." She looked at the fire. "It's mine."
The room was quiet.
"Yeah," Yang said, after a moment. "No, me too. I mean — I said thrill-seeker. That's true. But it's also..." She exhaled. "There's something about being able to do something when something needs doing. Ruby was there when I made a stupid decision that nearly got us both killed, because she was the only thing in the world I was thinking about protecting. And later I understood — if I'm strong enough, if I'm capable enough — I don't have to watch someone I love almost die because I wasn't ready." She paused. "That's the honest part."
"I know what I want to do," Blake said quietly. "I just haven't figured out all the how yet."
A pause.
They all looked at Nova and Turuk, who had been listening with the focused attention of people who were not simply waiting for their turn to speak.
"We'll get there," Turuk said. "All of us. That's kind of the whole point."
"Very philosophical," Weiss said.
"We have our moments," Nova said.
Weiss actually smiled at this, which was small and quickly managed.
Oobleck's voice arrived from somewhere above them: "Excellent work today! Get some rest — we have considerably more ground to cover tomorrow. Miss Rose and I will handle the perimeter this evening, after which I would appreciate volunteers for first watch."
"Yo," Ruby said, from the doorway.
She had just come back in, slightly windswept, with Zwei at her heels and the specific expression of someone who has just had a conversation that rearranged something in them.
"You're sure?" Yang asked.
"Yeah." She moved to her lookout position, then stopped. She looked at Nova, who was already looking at her.
"Wait, Ruby," he said.
She turned.
He was across the room in a few steps. "Do you have a few minutes? There's something I think we need to talk about."
It took her exactly three seconds to understand what he meant.
In those three seconds, her face arrived at a color, her heart arrived at a pace, and her hands did something completely involuntary with the hem of her jacket.
"Oh," she said. "Uh — well — in that case, I also — there's something I've been—" She stopped. "Yes. I have a few minutes."
Yang watched them move toward the window with the expression of someone who has been watching a very long setup reach its conclusion and is experiencing the specific satisfaction of inevitability.
"I knew," she said, to the fire.
"You always know," Blake said.
"It's a gift."
"It's extremely annoying," Weiss said.
"It's both," Blake said.
Part VII — The Honest Part
Location: A Window, Mountain Glenn | That Night
The windowsill was wide enough to sit in, which Ruby did, with Zwei settled between her and the open air, doing the dog's version of the first watch.
Nova sat beside her.
The ruins stretched below them — the empty geometry of a city that had been promised things it never received — and above them the moon was doing something specific with the clouds, moving in and out of clarity the way important things sometimes did.
"So," Ruby said.
"So," he said.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
Zwei looked at Nova. Looked at Ruby. Looked back at Nova with the specific attention of a creature that was paying more attention than anyone had asked him to.
"You first," Ruby said.
"I said there was something I needed to tell you," he said. "I'll go first."
"Okay."
He looked at the window. The specific angle of someone gathering something that has been waiting for the right container.
"I've been thinking," he said, "about what things mean. About why this year has been what it has been. And there's something I've been — not avoiding, exactly, but not addressing. Because I wasn't sure yet how to say it properly."
"Okay," she said again.
"You asked me once why I was so nice to you," he said. "And I told you it was because you were my friend and I didn't like seeing my friends upset. Which was true." He paused. "But it wasn't the whole truth."
She looked at him.
"The whole truth," he said, "is that there's something specific about you, Ruby. Not the way you fight, not the way you think — although those are both worth noting. It's the way you make things feel like they matter. You walk into a room and things become — more themselves. Like the room was waiting to be that way and you made it possible." He exhaled. "I don't have a cleaner way to say that."
She had stopped breathing in a normal rhythm approximately thirty seconds ago.
"And somewhere in this past year," he continued, "I stopped thinking of you as my friend and started thinking of you as—" He stopped. "As someone I don't want to imagine not having around. Someone I think about when I'm not with you. Someone who—" He looked at her directly, the specific directness that meant he was finished searching for the careful version. "I'm in love with you, Ruby Rose. I think I have been for a while. I just needed to be honest enough to say it."
The night was very quiet.
Ruby looked at him.
She had prepared things to say. She had been preparing things to say for weeks. She had a whole architecture of confession assembled from all the laters and all the warmth she'd been filing and all the things she had understood about herself in the conversations with Sala and Yang and her own reflection in the dormitory window at three in the morning.
All of that preparation resulted in the following:
"I have a question first," she said.
He blinked. "Okay."
"Do you have a girlfriend? Currently?"
He looked at her. The specific expression of someone who is not sure whether to be amused or moved, and is experiencing a proportion of both. "No."
"Good," she said. "Because that would make what I'm about to say significantly more complicated."
"What are you about to say?"
She took a breath.
"You have been—" she started. "Over this past year, you have been the person I wanted to tell things to first. The person I wanted to see when something good happened and the person I wanted when something bad happened. You make me feel—" She stopped, found the word. "Steady. You make me feel steady in a way I haven't felt before, which is a little ironic because you're also the person who most often makes my heart do things it's not supposed to do."
He was very still.
"I love you," she said. "I've loved you for a while, I think. I just kept filing it under later." She looked at him. "I'm finished filing it."
He exhaled.
She put her finger against his lips, because there was still one thing left.
"And I want to ask you something," she said. "Will you be my boyfriend?"
He looked at her over her finger.
"Yes," he said. "Obviously yes."
She took her finger away.
The night around them was the same as it had been thirty seconds ago. The ruins were the same. The moon was doing the same thing with the clouds.
Everything was the same and also completely different.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," he said.
Zwei barked once, briefly, in the way of a creature who has been supervising something and is satisfied with the outcome.
They both looked at the dog.
Then they looked at each other and the same laugh arrived in both of them at the same moment, which was the kind of thing that happens between two people when they are specifically, correctly calibrated to each other.
When the laughter settled, Ruby was looking at him with the specific expression of someone who has decided to do something and is watching herself decide.
"Can I—" she said. "Close your eyes for a second."
He looked at her.
"Please," she said.
He closed his eyes.
She took a breath. She reached up and put her arms around his neck, and she closed the distance, and she pressed her lips to his.
It lasted one breath. Two.
She pulled back.
"Okay," she said. "Open."
He opened his eyes and found her approximately six inches from his face, with her arms still around his neck and her cheeks an extraordinary color and her silver eyes very bright.
"What was that?" he asked, which was the most genuinely innocent question she had ever heard him ask.
"It was a kiss," she said, which was factually accurate and also the funniest thing she had ever had to say.
"I figured," he said. "I wasn't sure if it counted since I couldn't—"
She kissed him again.
This time he closed his eyes willingly, and his arms found her back, and the second one was longer and more certain and entirely mutual, and when it ended they were both very quiet and very close and Zwei was watching them with the absolute satisfaction of a dog who has been correct about something for a long time.
"That one counted," Nova said.
"That one counted," she confirmed.
A pause.
"Nova?" she said.
"Mm?"
"Can you—" She was going red again. "Could you call me Rubes? Sometimes? Like, when we're—like this?"
He looked at her. "It slipped out earlier."
"I know." She bit her lip. "I liked it."
"Rubes," he said, and the specific way he said it — quiet, like it belonged there — did something to her chest that she was going to spend the rest of the night being quietly overwhelmed by.
"Yeah," she said. "Like that."
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead, briefly, and then leaned back and looked at the ruins and the moon and the quiet specific night that had become the night when something finally stopped being later.
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
Zwei curled up between their feet.
The fire inside the building continued. The others continued. The world continued with the indifference of a world that has many things happening in it simultaneously and does not prioritize any of them.
But in the window of a ruined building in an abandoned city at the edge of a kingdom that was being threatened by things still unnamed, two people who had been finding their way toward each other for a year and a half sat with the specific quiet of having arrived.
Part VIII — What the Others Knew
Location: Inside the Building | Later
Yang was still awake.
She had been awake for a while, specifically oriented toward the window where Ruby and Nova had been sitting. She had not been able to see much. She had been able to hear — not the words, just the quality of the silence between them, the specific texture of a conversation that was resolving something.
Then the silence had changed.
Then there had been laughter, briefly, and then more silence, and then — she was fairly certain about this — no more conversation of the kind that requires words.
She stared at the ceiling of the abandoned building.
Turuk was on watch, which she knew because she could hear his footsteps at the perimeter, regular and unhurried.
Weiss was asleep.
Blake was asleep, or performing sleep well enough that the distinction was academic.
Yang lay there and felt the specific warmth of being glad about something without needing to express it immediately, which was an unusual experience for her and one she was learning to appreciate.
Take care of her, she had told him.
I intend to, he had said.
She believed him.
She had believed him since the night at the bookshop, when he had put himself between Ruby and a criminal's cane without hesitation and then asked if she was okay first.
Yeah, she thought, at the ceiling. Okay.
She was almost asleep when Turuk came in from the perimeter and settled against the wall near her.
"All clear," he said, quietly.
"Good," she said.
A pause.
"They talked," he said.
"I figured," she said.
"My brother looked—" He searched for the word. "Lighter. When he came back in."
She smiled at the ceiling. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He was quiet. "That's good."
"It really is."
They sat in the darkness, and the fire burned low, and somewhere in the ruins of Mountain Glenn a pair of huntsmen-in-training kept watch while the people they had decided to care for slept, and the night was old and quiet and the grimm stayed where they were.
It was not peaceful, exactly — peace required a certainty that none of them were naive enough to claim.
But it was, for tonight, enough.
★ END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN ★
Next: Chapter Seventeen — "Mountain Glenn: Protecting What Matters Most"
Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed the chapter. As you can see.. it finally happened! Nova x Ruby officially came to fruition. Next chapter the others will find out about it and you can expect Yang will be teasing Ruby about it with the others asking what happened between her and Nova.
Turuk x Yang will get some screen time over the next few chapters as well as we are heading into volume 3 within the next 2-3 chapters. I plan on implementing something Spector45 mentioned in regards to Turuk x Yang, so that one will develop over the next 2 volumes. Blake I'm thinking will still struggle with telling her brothers who their parents are until sometime just before volume 3's finale... that being the fall of Beacon.
As for Blake... I know what I said about her and Sun's relationship, but now I'm considering maybe... an alternate pairing for her? Though, that won't be a main focus.. just something on the side that will be hinted at and may or may not be explored in depth.
These pairings will stay as is for now:
Scarlett x Yatsuhashi, Daikon x Weiss, Aiko x Oscar (Volume 5).
Anyways sorry it took so long to update this story guys! Next update won't take nearly as long! Next episode will start off with Ruby and Nova first then it'll be the normal transition of perspectives from there. See y'all next update!