Hey everyone, I'm back with another chapter! We'll be continuing where last chapter left off and we may even get some clearance as to what is happening to Pyrrha currently. Thanks to another story I've been reading called Yin and Yang, I got some inspiration regarding something that will take place between Yang and Roy a little later in the story, but that's just a side note.
Anyways, who do you think Hailfire will end up with? Here are the options so far (vote for which one you guys think would be the best option):
Giblet
Shallot
Neptune
Sun?(lol this one's a maybe)
Yatsuhashi
Those are the options I can think of, make sure to vote by PM or leaving a comment for which is the best option and maybe.. if you want why it would work with Hailfire's character. Onto the story!
Ps. I don't own Dragon ball super/kai , Black Clover, or Rwby and their characters. Those belong to their respective creators, I only own the oc's that appear in this story along with having permission from a friend to use his characters to be in my stories (those being Tarro and Daikon).
Chapter 13: Dance Infiltration; Cinder's Dark Machinations
Opening song- Naruto Opening 8- Re:member
Visuals: Main Cast of this story along with Berethon, Hyatan, and the professors at Beacon. The dark scenery in the above Opening, replace it with Mercury holding his head and the scenery shattering like glass as Khanna pulls him to the surface. He joins Odyn, Ruby, and Khanna as they walk towards their friends.
Chapter Fourteen: Dance, Dance Infiltration — Cinder's Dark Machinations
The punch bowl occupied a position on the second level of the ballroom that had, over the course of the evening, become the unofficial territory of people who were taking a break from dancing rather than from the dance itself. It offered a reasonable view of the floor below, access to fruit punch in varying stages of being warm, and the particular social permission of a location that does not require you to be doing anything specific.
Ruby, Odyn, and Jaune had all arrived at it by different routes and for different reasons, and had discovered, upon arriving, that they were all glad for the company.
"To the socially awkward," Jaune said, raising his cup.
Ruby raised hers. "To the socially awkward."
Odyn raised his with the mild expression of someone accepting an accurate characterization.
The punch was warm. The view was good. The music drifted up from the floor below with the pleasant indistinction of music that you're not responsible for dancing to.
"Sorry it didn't work out with Weiss," Ruby said.
Jaune shrugged. "Honestly? It's alright. Neptune's— I mean, you have to respect it. Not everyone can pull off blue hair."
A pause.
He appeared to hear what he had just said.
"Should I—" Ruby started.
"Someone should probably tell him," Odyn said.
"Yeah."
Odyn looked at Jaune. "I have blue hair."
"I know that. I meant— not like yours, yours is good, I was talking about— you know what, I'm going to stop talking."
"Probably wise," Odyn agreed.
Ruby pressed her lips together. She was not successfully not laughing.
"Also," Odyn said, to Ruby, "she came alone."
"What?" Jaune's head came up.
"Weiss," Ruby said. "We haven't seen Neptune near her all evening."
Jaune looked at the floor below, where Weiss was standing near the edge of the dancing with the specific expression of someone trying very hard not to appear to be waiting for something. She had a white rose that she was progressively unmanning one petal at a time.
"Oh," Jaune said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he put down his cup, stood up straighter, and said: "Hold my punch."
Ruby took it. He was gone.
She looked at Odyn.
"Which way is he going to go?" she said.
He tilted his head slightly in the direction of the stairs, where Pyrrha was visible in her dress moving through the edge of the crowd with the expression of someone going somewhere specific and not entirely sure why.
"That way," he said.
Ruby watched Jaune stop at the top of the stairs.
Watch Pyrrha pass.
Watch Pyrrha disappear.
Watch Jaune apparently make a decision about himself that he had not made when he left the punch bowl.
"Aaand the plot thickens," Odyn said.
Ruby snorted. "Odyn, you absolute dork."
"I know," he said. "It's only when I'm around you."
She looked at him. He was watching the floor below with the mild, pleasant expression of someone who has said something true and is not making more of it than that.
She looked at the floor below.
She was smiling.
The balcony — slightly before this
Pyrrha stood at the balcony railing with the particular quality of someone who has come to a beautiful place specifically to experience being sad in it, which is a very human thing to do and more honest than most alternatives.
Jaune appeared behind her, as he tended to appear — with slightly more noise than intended but with the genuine concern that made you not mind.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine," she said. "I arrived late."
"You look really pretty."
She turned, and the genuine, unguarded quality of her surprise at this was the most honest expression she had made all evening. She smiled, and it was the real one. "Thank you, Jaune."
He rocked slightly on his heels. "Your date isn't going to— I mean, are you here with someone who's going to—"
"You're quite safe," she said. "For tonight."
"Right." He looked around. "So where's the guy?"
She looked at the railing. "There is no guy."
"But you're—" He gestured at her, which encompassed the dress, the hair, the general unfairness of the situation. "You're you. How does someone like you not have—"
"People assume," she said quietly, "that someone placed as highly as I've been placed cannot need anything from anyone. That the pedestal answers for itself." She looked at her hands on the railing. "It's very isolating, being considered unreachable. Even by people who might have wanted to try." She turned, and looked at him with the directness she reserved for things she had decided to say. "I like that you didn't know who I was when we met. I like that you just — saw me."
Jaune was quiet. He was doing the thing he did sometimes when something landed and he needed a moment to take it in without trying to immediately resolve it.
"Well," he said eventually. "If you don't get a date to the dance, I'll wear a dress."
She looked at him.
He looked back with the slightly alarmed expression of someone who has made a promise before he has thought it all the way through.
"An Arc never breaks his word," he said, slightly less confidently than he started.
She smiled — the real one again, the full one, the one she tried not to show too often because it did something to her face that she was not always sure she wanted people to see.
She walked away before he could see it properly.
Tell him, the voice in her head said, with the patient persistence of someone who has been watching this for a while.
I know, she said back. Not yet.
When?
Soon, she said. I promise. Soon.
Meanwhile — across the room
Daikon had been watching Weiss for approximately twenty minutes with the expression he wore when he had identified a problem and was deciding whether it was his problem to address.
He concluded, as he generally did when it came to the Schnee heiress, that it was.
She was standing near a flower arrangement, doing something to it with one finger that had reduced the number of intact petals by half. She had the expression of someone performing composure and finding it requires more effort than it usually did.
He crossed the room.
"Surprised to see you alone, princess."
She looked up. Rolled her eyes. "I am far too busy for boys."
"That was a lie," he said.
She opened her mouth.
"I'm not going to make fun of you," he said. "I just mean that you can't fool me. You've been looking forward to tonight for two weeks." He looked at her, with the direct, unhurried quality that was either extremely annoying or extremely honest depending on the day. "So. Since that fool Neptune apparently has other plans, and since you clearly want to dance—"
He extended his hand.
She stared at it.
"I'm not doing this because I feel sorry for you," he said, before she could voice the objection forming on her face. "I'm doing it because I wanted to. If you think otherwise, you're not giving me enough credit."
Weiss looked at his hand.
She looked at his face. His expression had the quality it had when he was being very specific about something — not performing, not managing, just saying the true thing in the direct way he had.
"A princess," he said, "shouldn't have to dance alone."
She made a sound that was not quite a laugh but contained some of the same material.
"Would you also like to know how many times I've told you that I'm not a princess?" she said.
"Several," he agreed. "I find I keep forgetting." He tilted his head. "May I have the honor?"
She looked at him for a moment longer. Then she put her hand in his.
"I suppose I can oblige," she said, "if you're the one asking."
The corner of his mouth moved. He led her to the floor and they began to dance, and neither of them mentioned that Weiss hadn't stopped smiling for the next several minutes, and neither of them mentioned that Daikon looked, for the first time all evening, like someone who had done exactly what he intended.
Elsewhere — the Cross Continental Transmit Tower
The guard never saw her coming.
This was, for Cinder Fall, the intended outcome. She had been planning this for longer than tonight — the timing, the approach vector, the specific guards and their rotation, the window that appeared precisely when she needed it to. She moved through the building's outer security with the efficiency of someone for whom violence was a last resort only in the sense that it was imprecise, and who found the less noisy options more interesting.
Inside, the elevator moved smoothly upward.
The guards had opinions about unauthorized access. She expressed her disagreement with these opinions through a series of short, decisive exchanges that left the guards alive and horizontal and considerably less certain about several things.
The console room had the quality of important rooms that are not designed to be beautiful — functional, deliberate, its purpose written in the architecture. She crossed to the control consoles, drew the device she had spent three weeks building into its current configuration, and began the work she had come here to do.
Mercury's voice arrived through the earbud.
"Ironwood's leaving," he said.
"I know," she said. "We're almost done."
"Mercury thinks you should—"
"I know what he thinks," she said. "Continue monitoring."
The device completed its function. A Queen chess piece appeared on the console's display as the sequence confirmed. She withdrew the device, turned—
And the elevator opened.
Odyn, watching Ruby enter the elevator ahead of him, had the specific feeling of someone who has arrived at a situation five minutes too late and is now operating on catch-up.
He had seen her go. He had calculated the trajectory. He had made the decision in approximately two seconds.
The CCT at this hour, without knowing what was inside — this was the kind of situation that required either company or backup, and the most available version of both was himself.
He stepped into the elevator behind her.
The ride up had the quality of a moment that is building toward something without announcing what.
"You don't have to come," Ruby said.
"I know," he said.
"I can handle—"
"Ruby," he said, "we've established that you can handle things. We've also established that handling things better is a collaborative exercise."
She appeared to consider arguing this and concluded, correctly, that she would not win.
"Fine," she said.
The elevator opened.
She stepped out with Crescent Rose in its folded form and called: "Hello? Is anyone—" and then did the specific stumble that heeled shoes produce when the wearer is attempting to be simultaneously cautious and mobile.
He caught her. He set her back on her feet.
"Too tense," he said. "Breathe."
She breathed. Her shoulders dropped by approximately two degrees.
"Better," he said.
The figure rose from behind the console.
She was beautiful in the specific way of weapons — the kind that is designed to be noticed because notice is part of the function. Dark hair, amber eyes, a mask that she hadn't yet removed. The composure of someone who had been caught and had immediately decided this was not a problem.
Ruby moved forward.
The dust compressed into glass shards in the woman's palm and dispersed toward her.
Odyn was already between them.
The barrier was light — not a constructed thing, more like the refusal of a space to permit damage within it. The shards hit it and scattered. He stepped through the dissipating barrier toward the woman with his blade already drawn, and the exchange that followed was brief and informative.
She was very good. He knew this in the first two seconds, which was as long as it took for him to establish that she was fast, technically precise, and completely comfortable with the specific quality of danger that this situation produced. She did not panic. She assessed.
She summoned the fire dust blades and moved toward Ruby. He moved to intercept. The fight that followed was the kind that does not look tactical from the outside but is entirely tactical from within it — each of them calculating the other, each of them working to create openings rather than simply applying force.
He was stronger, and she knew it.
She was more experienced with specific techniques, and he knew it.
The balance produced a fight that lasted longer than it should have, which was her objective. She needed time, not victory.
When the elevator opened and Ironwood entered — because Ironwood, who had left the dance early, had apparently received some alert — the fight stopped with the specific quality of a sentence abandoned midway through.
She was gone before the elevator doors had fully opened.
Odyn's foot came down in the space she had been. The stone cracked in the specific pattern of force applied to a surface from above.
"Tch," he said, which was a sound he had learned from Khanna and which expressed a very specific quality of frustration efficiently.
Ruby was behind him, crescent Rose extended, looking at the space where the woman had been.
"She got away," Ruby said.
"For now," he said.
"Again."
"She's very good," he said. "But she also had a specific objective here tonight. She achieved it and left. That tells us something."
"What does it tell us?"
"That whatever she came here to do, she's done. Which means we need to figure out what that was."
The console screens were showing a black queen chess piece on several monitors.
Ironwood was already on his scroll.
Back in the ballroom — meanwhile
The dance had the pleasant momentum of something in its last hour — not ending, but aware of its ending, the specific quality that parties have when everyone has decided to enjoy what remains rather than anticipate the conclusion.
Khanna and Mercury had been dancing for most of the second half of the evening, which was either a coincidence or an inevitability and was probably the second thing.
She was a good dancer. He had not expected this and then had immediately revised the expectation, because Khanna moved the way she did everything — efficiently, with purpose, and without making more of it than the situation required.
He was trying not to stare at her.
He was failing.
She appeared not to notice, which was either true or was a courtesy.
"You've been quieter than usual," she said.
"Have I?"
"For the last ten minutes, you've been working through something."
He looked at her. "How do you know?"
"You have a specific expression," she said. "The one you use when you're deciding whether to say something."
"That's very observant."
"I'm an Elf," she said. "We perceive things."
He looked at the dancing couples around them, the warm light of the chandeliers, the music that was something slow and pleasant. He thought about what Cinder had told him and Emerald, which he had been thinking about since she told him, and which had been sitting in the specific way of information that reorganizes how you see everything around it.
"Khanna," he said.
"Mercury."
"I heard something tonight that I'm still working through."
She looked at him. "Do you want to tell me what it is?"
"Not tonight," he said. "Not yet. But — soon."
"Okay," she said, simply, which was the kind of okay that meant I trust you to tell me when you're ready rather than I'm dropping the subject.
"You're very easy to talk to," he said.
"People tell me that."
"Do they?"
"Khanna is easy to be angry at," she said, with the even self-awareness of someone who knows their own edges clearly. "And apparently also easy to talk to. I think it's the same thing, at the root. I just say things directly. People find that easier than having to navigate around something."
He looked at her. She was looking at the other dancers.
"I like that about you," he said.
She turned and looked at him. The specific quality of that look — whatever she was doing with it, whatever she was deciding to say or not say — settled into the small, genuine smile that was her version of something larger.
"Thank you," she said.
They danced.
Cinder slipped back through the event with the ease of someone who has done this before — the change of clothes completed in a maintenance corridor, the mask discarded, the bracelets crushed underfoot by guards who encountered them two minutes after she had already arrived at the refreshment table with the demeanor of someone who had been there for the past hour.
She found Khanna and Mercury from across the room.
She watched them for a moment.
Mercury was a variable she had not fully accounted for, which was unusual for her. She was generally good at accounting for variables. But Mercury's relationship with the dark-haired Elf girl had developed in a direction she had not anticipated, and the relationship had a quality — she could see it from across the room — that was not tactical on either side. It was genuine. It was the specific quality of two people who have known each other in some register that they cannot currently name.
This was useful information.
It was also potentially inconvenient.
She crossed to them.
"Do you mind if I cut in?"
Khanna stepped back with the controlled ease of someone removing themselves from a situation while watching it carefully.
"Not at all," she said. "I'll get drinks." She looked at Mercury. "Save me the next one."
"Yes," he said.
She walked away. Cinder watched her go.
"She's lovely," Cinder said, to Mercury.
"Yes," he said, without inflection.
"You like her."
"I enjoy her company."
"Mercury." She tilted her head slightly. "I wasn't asking."
He was quiet for a moment. "I don't know what to call what I feel," he said, which was the kind of honesty that surprised even him.
"You don't need to call it anything," Cinder said. "You just need to decide what to do with it." She looked at where Khanna had gone. "She's the kind of person who deserves to know where she stands."
He looked at Cinder.
This was not the conversation he had expected to have.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"Smoothly," she said. "Better than expected. Although—" She paused. "There were unexpected complications."
"Ruby Rose."
"And her companion." Her eyes were somewhere else for a moment. "The blue-haired one is stronger than Roman's account suggested. I'll need to account for that."
"He's a prince," Mercury said.
"I know," Cinder said. "I know exactly who he is." She looked back at the dancers. "Enjoy the rest of the evening, Mercury. Khanna is coming back."
She stepped away.
He watched her go with the expression he used when he was performing calm.
Khanna arrived with two cups. She handed him one. He took it.
"She asked you to dance," she observed.
"She did."
"And?"
"She's very smooth," he said.
"She is," Khanna agreed. She looked at where Cinder had gone. Her expression was the expression she used when she had already assessed something and had reached a conclusion she did not like. "She is."
They stood for a moment.
"She said something to you," Khanna said.
"She said several things," Mercury said.
"One thing in particular."
He looked at her.
She was not looking at him — she was watching the room, which was how she watched most things. But the quality of her attention was the specific quality of someone who is listening to more than one conversation simultaneously.
"She's planning something that happens soon," Khanna said quietly. "Whatever she came here to do tonight is a piece of it. And when it moves—"
"I know," he said.
"When it moves," she repeated, and this time it was directed at him specifically, "you'll need to decide."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I've already decided," he said.
She turned and looked at him.
He looked back.
"Okay," she said. And this time the word had the weight of something that is more than a word — the specific weight of I trust this, I'm with you, we move forward from here.
"Okay," he said.
They drank their punch.
Around them, the ballroom moved in its warm, bright patterns, and the music was something slow and easy, and the evening was almost over.
On the balcony above the floor, Jaune returned
He came back from wherever he had been with the expression of someone who has made a decision and is committed to it and is perhaps doing a small amount of not thinking about how it looks.
He was wearing a dress.
It was white. It had a blue ribbon. It was, structurally, a perfectly good dress that happened to be on a person who had put it on specifically because he had made a promise and he was not going to break it.
Pyrrha saw him.
She put her hand over her mouth.
She failed, completely and comprehensively, to not laugh.
"An Arc never breaks his word," Jaune said, with the dignity of someone who has decided that dignity and a white dress are not mutually exclusive.
"Jaune!" She was laughing. She was laughing in the full, real, unguarded way that she almost never laughed, the kind that arrives before you can decide to present it correctly. "You didn't have to—"
"I said I would," he said.
He extended his hand.
She composed herself. Mostly.
"Would you like to dance?" he said.
She took his hand. He swept her off her feet — not with particular grace, but with sufficient commitment to carry it — and she made a sound of surprised delight that she did not attempt to manage.
From the upper level, Ruby and Odyn watched.
Below, Nora had already found Ren and was dragging him to the floor with the energy of someone for whom this moment had been anticipated and is now officially occurring. JNPR's choreography, when it materialized, had the quality of something that had been practiced enough to be surprising and left enough room for Jaune to spin Pyrrha properly.
He spun her.
She landed.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
Neither of them said the thing they were both thinking, which was fine, because there was time, and the dancing was good, and some things are worth saying properly.
Ozpin's office — the next morning
Ironwood's fist hit the desk with the conviction of a man who has information and is processing it at volume.
"They were here," he said. "They were here, Ozpin."
"We're aware," Glynda said.
"And we're going to do what about it? Stay the course? Wait for them to make another move while we—"
"James." Ozpin's voice had the quality it had when he had been patient for a long time and was now being precise. "Yes."
Ironwood looked at him.
"Not because I lack urgency," Ozpin said, "but because acting before we understand what was done here tonight is precisely what our opponent expects. She came here for something specific. She got it. Until we know what it was, moving our forces tells her what we know—" He picked up his mug. "—which is currently nothing."
"I can have teams in the southeast within—"
"Ironwood."
The voice was not Ozpin's.
Sybyrh had been standing to the side of the room in the particular stillness that meant she had been waiting for the appropriate moment to say something and had identified it.
"A flag-bearer," she said, "does not precede the army. A scout does."
Ironwood turned to her.
She looked back at him with the direct, unemotional quality of someone who is going to say this once and would prefer not to repeat it.
"What we know," she said, "is that she was here, she accessed the CCT, and she escaped when confronted. What we do not know is what she accessed, what she changed, and what the next step of the plan is. Sending your forces into the southeast tells her that we know to look there. If she's smart—" A pause. "—and she is — that is sufficient time to relocate."
"So we do nothing?"
"We send scouts," she said. "We confirm what's in the southeast. We understand the plan before we act against it." She paused. "Or we can make a great deal of noise and give her time to adjust. The choice is yours, General."
Ironwood looked at Ozpin.
Ozpin looked at his mug.
"She is," Ozpin said, "as I have said before, extremely good at this."
The door opened. Ruby Rose stepped in, slightly out of breath, with Odyn behind her.
"Sorry it took so long," Ruby said. "Someone hit all the buttons on the elevator."
Odyn made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
"It wasn't me," Ruby said.
"Ruby," Odyn said, in the tone of someone declining to comment further.
"It wasn't."
Ozpin smiled — the genuine one, which was different from his public one and which arrived without warning. "Come in," he said. "We have some questions."
Later — the corridor outside the office
Ruby was in the specific quiet of someone who has said something in a meeting and is now replaying the phrasing to see if it was correct, which is an activity that rarely produces useful conclusions.
Odyn walked beside her.
"You did fine," he said.
"I said my bad guy catching record is zero for three."
"You did say that."
"To the headmaster and two other professors."
"And a general," he added helpfully.
"Odyn."
"You also said you'd do better," he said. "Which is the relevant part."
She looked at him sidelong. He looked straight ahead with the mild expression of someone making a case.
"Also," he said, "your instinct to pursue was correct. The fact that we didn't catch her doesn't mean the pursuit was wrong."
"She got away again."
"She did," he agreed. "She's very good. We'll account for that going forward."
Ruby was quiet for a moment. Then: "Did you know she was going to be there?"
"I suspected someone was," he said. "I didn't know it would be her specifically. I recognized her, though."
"From where?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Later," he said. "Not here."
She looked at him and filed this — the specific quality of I know something I'm not saying yet that she had learned to recognize in him and had learned, mostly, to trust. He would say it when it was the right moment. He always did.
"The headmaster also asked you to stay behind," she said.
"Yes."
"What about?"
"Also later," he said.
She considered this. "You're keeping a great deal of things for later."
"I am," he agreed.
"Am I going to like all of them?"
He was quiet for exactly long enough that she looked at him.
"Some of them," he said, "will require some adjustment."
"And some?"
The corner of his mouth moved. "Some," he said, "you'll probably like quite a bit."
She looked at him.
He looked forward.
She smiled at the corridor ahead of her, where her teammates were almost certainly waiting to hear everything, and decided that later was an acceptable timeline.
Team RWBY's dormitory — afternoon
The announcement from Ozpin sat over the dormitory the way announcements from Ozpin tended to sit — with more weight in retrospect than it had in the moment.
Ruby was sitting on her bunk reading the mission profile when the knock came.
Then Zwei arrived, which reorganized everyone's priorities.
The corgi materialized from the cylindrical package with the cheerful certainty of an animal that has never doubted its welcome, and the room rearranged itself around him — Weiss's composure collapsing entirely into baby talk, Blake achieving altitude on Ruby's bunk with the efficiency of someone who has made this calculation before and knows how long the jump takes, Yang laughing at all of it, Ruby on the floor with Zwei investigating her face.
Odyn appeared in the doorway.
He looked at Zwei.
He looked at Ruby.
He looked at the bag she was clearly preparing to use for the purpose of concealing a dog during what appeared to be an official Beacon mission.
"What exactly are you planning to do with that?" he asked.
Ruby's expression was the expression of someone caught in the act who is going to attempt a very specific kind of innocence. "With what?"
"The bag," he said. "With the dog in it."
"The dog isn't in the bag yet."
"But he's going to be."
"I mean—"
"Ruby."
She looked at him.
He turned around.
"I'll cover for you this time," he said, to the hallway. "Don't expect it to work if the dog comes out of the bag." He paused. "Also catch up to your team, we're going to be late."
She was already moving.
He was already walking.
The amphitheater — final assembly
The mission was assigned. The profiles were distributed. The discussion about which quadrant was best suited to team RWBY's particular combination of skills and completely predictable tendencies was brief and concluded in the direction it was always going to conclude.
Team RWBY selected Quadrant 5.
The screen declined to process the request.
First-year clearance insufficient, it said, in the specific flat tone of systems that do not make exceptions.
Ozpin materialized behind them.
He always materialized. It was unclear to Ruby whether this was a headmaster skill or specific to him, but she had stopped being startled by it and started simply accepting it as a feature of his presence in her life.
"I could send you back to your dormitories," he said.
He did not send them back to their dormitories.
He bent the rule in the specific, deliberate, I-am-choosing-to-do-this way of someone who has already decided that the rule is going to bend and is doing it himself rather than watching it bend accidentally.
"He does that," Odyn said, from across the amphitheater, to his team, who had been watching.
"On purpose?" Hailfire asked.
"On purpose," he confirmed.
"Why?" Flare asked.
He looked at where team RWBY was now clustered around the hologram screen with varying degrees of excitement and determination. He looked at Ruby, specifically, who had the expression she wore when she was completely committed to something — not the performed commitment of someone who wants to appear determined, but the real thing, which was quieter and didn't look at the audience.
"Because," he said, "sometimes the rule is not the point."
He walked toward team RWBY.
His team followed.
The docks
Team RWBY had processed their assignment, processed their concern about CVFY's extended mission, processed Velvet's tired but reassuring smile, and were now standing in front of Professor Oobleck — which they were still processing.
"Who's ready to fight for their lives?" he said, with approximately the same amount of enthusiasm he brought to the history of the Faunus Wars, which was to say: considerably.
Then Oobleck looked past them.
"Ah — you must be the additional students. Excellent. I was told to expect you."
Team RWBY turned.
Odyn was there. Roy beside him, with the composed ease of someone who does not arrive places so much as simply end up in them. Hailfire, straight-backed and practical. Flare, slightly to Roy's left.
"Odyn," Ruby said, and his name had a quality in it that was specific to this moment — not surprise exactly, but the kind of recognition that produces an involuntary warmth before you have time to manage it.
He looked at her. The expression he produced was the expression of someone who has been asked to do something they would have volunteered for and is choosing not to say so.
"We tend to go where our friends go," Roy said. "It seemed applicable."
"Bodyguards?" Yang said, and the word had a quality that suggested she was filing this under several simultaneous categories.
"Think of it," Odyn said, looking at Ruby specifically, "as not wanting to miss it."
The airship's boarding signal activated.
He offered his arm.
She looked at it.
She took it.
They boarded.
End of Chapter Fourteen
To be continued in Chapter Fifteen: Mountain Glenn — The Confession, Part One
Cinder Fall stood at the edge of the ballroom and watched the students dance and did not feel anything in particular about it, which was, she had found over the years, the most efficient way to feel about things you have decided are not going to be complications.
Then she watched a dark-haired Elf and a silver-haired boy stand together at the punch table and share a silence that had the specific quality of two people who have each said something true to the other and are carrying the weight of it.
She filed this.
Variables with feelings were, in her experience, the most interesting kind.
Also, frequently, the most inconvenient.
She had a plan for the inconvenient ones.
She had a plan for most things.
The thing she had not planned for was that a boy in a white dress had just made someone laugh with her whole self for the first time in months, and across the room, a dark elf had said something true to a girl in red without realizing he was doing it, and somewhere in the dance a girl who was not entirely one person had started to understand both halves of herself.
Plans accommodate most things.
They do not always accommodate what people do when they are loved.
Ending theme: Black Clover ED 6- My Song/My Days: SOLIDEMO
Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Sorry this one took so long to get out, it being 3 days before Christmas. So consider this an early Christmas present. Well... Ruby finally admitted that she's in love with Odyn. Her confession will be soon, but not too soon. Since the next chapter will be mostly them getting to Mountain Glenn and scoping it out before dealing with Roman, I don't think having her confess right now would be ideal. Maybe if the situation in the story allows for it.. I don't know...
I also thought you guys would appreciate some of the other ships getting some spotlight. Blake's pairing will have to develop a little differently since she still has that chemistry with Sun. As for Hailfire, I'm leaving that up to the poll for now before deciding. Flare, I'm figuring to keep with Baron since he seems to be the most natural fit for her. I still don't know what to do with Emerald though lol I think she should stay evil, but then I think maybe I'll go in a different direction with her. I keep going back and forth about it, hence my dilemma with her.
As for what's going on with Pyrrha... that I'm planning to delve into more when the story reaches volume 3 of Rwby cannon (which should be in a few chapters). Now, I'm thinking about the first opening for when it gets to volume 3 of Rwby cannon. Here are the options:
Option 1:
Tales of Arise opening 1: Hibana
Option 2:
Jujutsu Kaisen opening 2: Vivid Vice
Option 3:
Twin Star Exorcists opening 2- Re:call
Those are the options for the first half of Volume 3, the second half I already have an opening in mind for that. Feel free to PM me or leave a comment regarding which opening I should use next.
Now, a quick poll before we go:
When should Ruby confess her love to Odyn?
1. Right before Ruby encounters the White Fang, while she's on watch for the night.
2. Following Roman's arrest in Vale
3. Before the Vytal Tournament begins
4. During the Vytal Festival.
That's all for now. Be sure to vote for both of the above polls. PM me or leave a comment in the reviews with your picks. I'll make sure to try and get out one more chapter before the new year, we'll see. Until the next update, see ya!
Preview:
Ruby: oh uh... guess I'm doing the preview for next chapter huh?
Yang: looks like it, Rubes.
Ruby: ok.. I was surprised Odyn and the others are here but.. what exactly are they doing here? And.. what do they mean by bodyguards? Does this mean...
Yang: looks like you'll get your chance to be alone with Odyn, Rubes. Go for it and tell him how you feel about him! We'll cheer you on, Right guys?
Weiss/Blake: Right!
Ruby: thanks guys! I'll tell him how I really feel about him! Next time, Chapter 14: Mountain Glenn; Ruby's confession part 1!
Weiss: Make sure you keep an eye out for it!