Author's Note
Hey everyone, RoseSaiyan2 here, back with another fresh update! First off, I want to apologize for the delay since the last drop.
This chapter is going to kick off a bit differently than the official Episode 1 of Volume 2 in canon. Since Ruby formally asked Nova to take her on as a martial arts student at the end of the last arc, we're going to dive straight into some dedicated interaction between the two of them first to really get those character dynamics moving.
This will naturally help develop their relationship further as we head into the new volume. I also want to take a moment to highlight some of the other romantic pairings weaving through our main cast across the three central teams. A few of these you've probably already guessed: Turuk x Yang and Daikon x Weiss. Scarlett and Aiko are still a bit of the outliers at the moment, but I'm figuring out their paths as the narrative progresses. For Aiko, I have a pretty solid direction in mind. For Scarlett, though, I'm playing with a few different interesting possibilities and trying to figure out the logistics.
To help me out, here are the current options for Scarlett's pairing:
Mercury Black (Redemption / Reformed route)
Jaune Arc (following traditional fanfiction community trajectories)
Fox Alistair (Team CFVY)
Yatsuhashi Daichi (Team CFVY)
Sage Ayana (Team SSSN)
Reader Poll: Super Saiyan Access
I also have a quick community question for you all regarding power scaling: When should Nova and his team finally unlock and gain access to Super Saiyan?
Volume 3: During the chaotic Fall of Beacon
Volume 3: During a high-stakes field mission earlier in Volume 3
Training Arc: Under the direct guidance of the Saiyan instructors
Volume 4: Waiting until the post-Beacon journey
That is all for now! I'll drop another official poll at the very end of the upcoming chapter, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the start of Volume 2.
P.S. - I do not own Dragon Ball Z, Kai, or Super (belonging to Akira Toriyama and Toei Animation), nor do I own RWBY (created by Monty Oum and Rooster Teeth). I own four of the six OCs featured in this story, and I have gracious permission to use the OCs Tarro and Daikon courtesy of my friend ComparedDread12.
---
CHAPTER EIGHT: Best Day Ever; The Food Fight?!
Part I - Before Sunrise
Location: The Edge of Forever Fall Forest | Early Morning
Ruby Rose maintained a remarkably straightforward system for keeping secrets.
It wasn't an intricate or overly complicated framework. Essentially, it boiled down to slipping out of the dormitory before anyone else was conscious and returning before anyone realized she had ever left. This strategy required an aggressively early wake-up call and a willingness to bypass that quiet part of the morning where she usually stood in the common room kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil and letting her mind wander. Today, she was entirely content to skip that part.
She skipped lightly through the quiet, lower streets of Vale with her signature hood pulled up, her hands shoved deep into her pockets, and a persistent, fluttering sensation in her chest that she had spent the past week filing under nervous-excited-though she was growing increasingly suspicious that it deserved its very own, heavily guarded category.
Today marked the official commencement of her training.
The mere thought of it had been looping in the back of her mind ever since that chaotic night at the docks. Not with anxiety, but with the high-voltage, electric anticipation of something monumental. She was finally going to learn how to defend herself without relying on Crescent Rose. She was going to unlock the secrets of ki manipulation. She was diving headfirst into a secret project that her teammates were entirely oblivious to, planning for that glorious future moment when she would casually reveal her new skills and watch their reactions-ranging from Yang dramatically face-planting in shock to Weiss executing a brilliantly controlled facial expression that meant she was fiercely impressed while refusing to admit it out loud.
These were undeniably elite thoughts. She processed them while maintaining a brisk, determined pace through the pre-dawn alleys of Vale, and she found them deeply satisfying.
Of course, flickering at the edge of her awareness, there was also the less neatly cataloged element of this arrangement: training with Nova inherently meant spending private time with Nova. Which was completely fine. They were friends. Best friends, by her own unilateral decree, which he had accepted with quiet, steady grace. Being alone with a close friend was entirely normal, completely acceptable, and definitely not something that warranted any obsessive emotional analysis.
She was vaguely aware that this specific line of self-reasoning was carrying an immense amount of structural weight.
She had been aware of it for several weeks, truth be told.
She had simply tossed it into the filing cabinet labeled Later.
At this point, Later was threatening to burst its seams, and she was rapidly losing track of where she'd put things.
With a sharp shake of her head, she picked up her pace.
The Forever Fall Forest at dawn possessed an entirely different personality than it did beneath the blazing heat of the afternoon sun. The sprawling canopy of red and amber leaves remained shrouded in deep, pre-dawn shadows before the sun found its proper angle, and the light filtering through the branches was softer-less cinematic, deeply atmospheric, the quiet kind of beauty that didn't feel the need to demand your attention.
Ruby reached the tree line, stepped into the cool shade, and swept her silver eyes across the clearing. It was completely empty.
"Cutting it kind of close, aren't you?"
She whipped around.
Nova dropped silently from the high boughs overhead, moving with the absolute, casual fluidity of a guy who had been lounging on a branch for the last fifteen minutes and considered it an entirely reasonable way to spend a morning. He landed lightly on the turf, executing the quiet, high-efficiency touchdown of someone who had done it so many times he'd forgotten most people found it practically supernatural.
Ruby stared at him.
He stared back.
"What is that supposed to mean?!" she puffed her cheeks out, narrowing her eyes. "I was precisely on schedule! I said I would arrive, and as you can clearly observe, I have arrived."
To his credit, he had the grace to look faintly chastised-a reaction that manifested on his usually stoic face as a subtle warmth dusting his cheekbones and a quiet, defensive clearing of his throat. "You're right. My apologies. I didn't mean to imply-"
She held her indignant pout for roughly three full seconds before cracking completely, dissolving into bright, infectious laughter-the maximum duration she could ever maintain a fake glare when he actually looked genuinely apologetic, which wasn't long at all.
"I know," she giggled. "I'm just messing with you."
He studied her for a beat, his expression shifting into one of mild amusement. "That was entirely calculated."
"I have been keeping a mental ledger of precisely what triggers a reaction out of you," she announced cheerfully. "Implying that I'm perpetually late sits comfortably in the top three."
"That is remarkably scientific of you."
"Hey, I'm a student at Beacon Academy. I apply the scientific method to all critical life problems." She offered him a bright, unguarded smile. "Morning, Nova."
The corners of his eyes crinkled just a fraction, settling into that familiar, quiet satisfaction he reserved for moments he had no intention of voicing out loud. "Morning, Ruby."
He turned his head, scanning the perimeter-the hardwired habit of a fighter verifying his zone even when he already knew the coast was clear. "Did anyone manage to tail you?"
"I departed long before Yang even stirred," Ruby assured him, waving a hand dismissively. "When Yang is dead asleep, not even a catastrophic localized earthquake could track me."
"A valid point." He brought his gaze back to hers, his demeanor instantly sharpening. "Are you ready?"
Ruby pulled her shoulders back, standing a fraction taller. "I've been ready for a whole week."
---
Part II - The Scars
"Before we initiate any structural movements," Nova stated, shifting his weight slightly, "I need to establish the theoretical framework. You need to understand the mechanics of what we are building toward, and precisely why the curriculum is structured this way."
Ruby nodded, immediately locking her silver eyes onto his with that intense, undivided attention she reserved for things that genuinely mattered to her-a focused quality he had long since learned to distinguish from polite obligation.
"Ki is not an external utility," he explained, his voice even and deliberate. "It is not a tool you pick up from a rack and set down when the shift is over. It is the core bio-energy your organism constantly generates-it permeates every fiber, every microscopic shift, every instinctive decision. Most inhabitants of Remnant possess a cousin to it. They call it Aura, and they are fundamentally correct about its origin, but profoundly limited in their understanding of its ceiling." He paused, letting the thought settle. "Ki is infinitely more versatile. Significantly more destructive. And because of that, it is drastically more demanding. Your physical vessel must be thoroughly conditioned to bear the sheer hydraulic pressure of it before you attempt to direct it. If you bypass that foundation-"
Without warning, he reached up, unclasped the fastenings of his upper tactical armor, and pulled the garment off.
Ruby had harbored zero expectations for this maneuver, which meant she had roughly a two-second window of absolute cognitive blankness before reality registered, followed by three frantically scrambled seconds of desperately trying to calibrate her expression into something resembling neutral composure.
The scarring across his upper body was staggering.
The pale, jagged topography ran from his forearms up across his shoulders and vanished beneath the high collar of his undershirt-a brutal cartography of ancient trauma. They weren't crisp, clinical surgical incisions; they were wide, puckered channels of deep tissue damage where flesh had plainly torn and healed over painfully slow cycles of recovery. They were clearly years old, permanently woven into the man he was now rather than the boy he had been when the damage was dealt.
Instinctively, Ruby's hand flew up, clapping hard over her mouth to suppress a sharp intake of breath.
He caught the micro-shift in her expression and instantly averted his gaze-adopting that specific, defensive posture he always defaulted to whenever an emotional load became too heavy to hold while making eye contact.
"I was young," he murmured, his tone dropping flat. "Significantly younger than your current age. I possessed an immense reserve of ki and a physical shell that was entirely unprepared to anchor it. And I was recklessly impatient." A dry, humorless chuckle escaped his lips-the brittle sound of someone who had processed a nightmare enough to strip it of its sharpest teeth, yet still tasted the ash. "Impatience extracts a heavy toll. These are my receipts."
He kept his face turned away.
Which precisely explained why he looked so utterly blindsided when he felt a sudden rush of motion, turning back only to find her right there-her arms wrapped securely around his torso, pressing her forehead directly against his shoulder with the fierce, unfiltered warmth that defined everything Ruby Rose did once she decided an emotional boundary was worth crossing.
"I had no idea," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. "I'm so sorry. I am so terribly sorry you had to endure that all by yourself."
He stood completely frozen in the circle of her arms, paralyzed by the sudden kinetic reality of a gesture he had never built an internal database to process. Then, with agonizing slowness, he lifted one hand and laid it tentatively against the back of her head-a hesitant, awkward motion that hovered somewhere between an affectionate pat and a mechanical error.
"It belongs to a very distant timeline," he murmured. "The objective isn't to evoke your sympathy. The objective is to ensure you never have to carve those lessons into your own skin."
She pulled back just enough to look up into his dark eyes, her gaze shimmering with an intensity that signaled she was fighting off a wave of profound emotion. Without asking permission, she reached out, her fingertips tracing lightly down the length of an old, jagged scar along his forearm-not invading his space, but offering the quiet, grounding contact of a witness acknowledging a ghost.
"Then teach me properly," she commanded softly, her voice ringing with renewed steel. "So I never make the mistake of breaking myself before I'm ready."
Something deep within his expression softened, locking into a profound, silent stillness. Then: "That is precisely the plan."
She reluctantly stepped back to a respectful distance, though the physical retreat took visibly more conscious effort than usual, and frantically smoothed down the front of her combat skirt.
"Right!" she announced, clapping her hands together with false brightness. "Where do we start?"
The bundled training outfit was already neatly folded atop a gnarled tree root when he turned to retrieve it-a traditional crimson gi, a form-fitting black undershirt, matching trousers and boots, accompanied by a pair of weighted wristbands bearing the unmistakable aura of dense, heavy-duty metallurgy.
He extended the bundle toward her.
"You will want to change into these," he instructed, before abruptly pivoting on his heel and marching off toward the tree line with the brisk, high-velocity determination of a man who had calculated an escape vector from a social awkwardness and was executing it without a moment's hesitation-a tactical retreat Ruby found paradoxically endearing.
"Nova-"
"I will maintain a perimeter over here," he called back without turning his head, the back of his neck tinted a faint, betraying shade of pink.
She looked down at the pile of training garments resting in her arms. Then she stared at the empty patch of forest he had just vanished into.
He's actually considerate, she mused to herself with a small, fond smile. When he gets thoroughly embarrassed, he clears the zip code so fast you don't even have a window to tease him about it.
She changed with the blistering speed born of growing up in a chaotic household where personal privacy was a polite fiction.
The exact second she pulled the gi trousers tight, laced the heavy boots, and snapped the wristbands into place, the secret behind the weight revealed itself. The entire ensemble easily tipped the scales past thirty pounds-hitting her body with a dense, pervasive heaviness that instantly forced her to readjust her center of gravity. It took her two deliberate attempts of standing upright before her nervous system recalibrated to the load.
For years, she had carried Crescent Rose everywhere-a massive war-scythe leaning closer to a hundred pounds than fifty. She had long since stopped noticing its bulk because her muscles had simply rewritten her baseline for "normal." Thirty pounds of fabric and accessories should have felt like nothing.
The catch was the distribution. The scythe's weight was localized, familiar, and leveraged at the end of a pole. The uniform wrapped the burden around her core, her joints, and her limbs uniformly.
"Oh," she breathed out, her eyes widening.
"Processed the data yet?" Nova's voice drifted from the tree line as he stepped back into the clearing, his expression carrying the warm, quiet satisfaction of an instructor who had set a practical trap and calmly waited for the student to spring it.
"You knew exactly how much these would weigh me down," she accused, hands on her hips.
"Your physical frame already shifts weights that would crush an ordinary huntsman-in-training," he noted objectively. "I merely redistributed the kinetic load to challenge your stabilizing muscles." He tilted his head, studying her posture. "How does the baseline feel?"
She bounced lightly on her toes, testing her vertical spring, and settled her stance. "Unaccustomed. But entirely manageable."
"Acceptable. That is our starting line." He locked his gaze onto hers with total, unblinking seriousness. "We will incrementally scale the weight as your muscle density adapts. But for right now-show me your stance."
---
Part III - Fundamentals
Within the span of the first hour, Ruby absorbed three fundamental truths.
The first was the harsh, humbling realization that she had been leaking force for years. Her striking fundamentals were surprisingly solid-better than Nova had initially anticipated, and she could easily distinguish the sharp, analytical edge of his genuine assessment from mere instructor encouragement-but she was committing a critical error. She was throwing kinetic energy sideways instead of driving it straight ahead. She was dispersing the punch instead of compressing and directing it.
The second revelation was that once the correction was finally pointed out, it was almost painfully obvious-to the point where she felt genuinely foolish for missing it herself. Nova demonstrated the technique precisely once: he planted his feet, lowered his center of gravity into a deep, stable crouch, dropped his body weight squarely behind the axis of rotation, and threw a completely open-air punch into the empty space in front of him. The resulting shockwave sent a sharp gust of wind rifling through her hair from three full feet away. The biomechanics were so elegantly simple in execution that Ruby felt a fleeting flush of embarrassment over how long she had operated without them.
Then, she mimicked the motion.
The crisp, explosive crack her knuckles made against his flat, catching palm startled both of them with its sudden, ringing resonance.
"Execute it again," he instructed, his voice dropping into a register of focused interest.
She repeated the strike.
The miniature displacement of air that accompanied her second punch was undeniably small-barely a ripple, a minor disturbance rather than a gale-force gust-but it was undeniably present, and it was hers. Ruby's silver eyes immediately dilated to the size of saucers, reflecting her sudden shock.
"That was ki," he stated quietly. "Did you perceive it?"
"I perceived something substantial," she breathed.
"That something is the foundational seed of everything that follows." He closed his palm, pulling his hand back and staring at the point of impact with the satisfied air of an experimentalist confirming a working hypothesis. "You possess a massive reserve, Ruby. Significantly larger than the average combat student at your stage of development. Which precisely explains why we must prioritize conditioning your physical vessel first-methodically and deliberately-before we ever attempt to channel that output outward."
"How long will that take?" she asked, her tone laced with eagerness.
"Until your biological adaptation confirms it," he answered evenly. "Not a designated timeline. A physical threshold."
She paused, processing the answer. "That is exceptionally-"
"Nova-esque?" he offered, a dry note coloring his voice.
"I was going to use the word 'wise,' " she corrected with a grin, "though that also applies."
The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Come back to the line. Again."
They spent the remainder of the hour locked into that rare, effortless cadence of two individuals who had instinctively discovered they made exceptional sparring partners-Nova demonstrating the mechanics, Ruby executing the iteration, and both of them continuously calibrating in real-time as she organically bridged the gap toward correct form rather than being forced into it. He corrected without invalidating her instincts; she absorbed instructions without suffering a bruised ego. By Ruby's mental calculation, it was hands-down the most effective pedagogical instruction she had ever received, which was saying something considering her primary combat tutor had been Qrow Branwen, an exceptionally high bar.
The abrupt intrusion of their pocket Scrolls ended the session-either due to the universe's wicked sense of irony or the inevitable mathematical consequence of two people entirely losing track of time while intensely focused.
Ruby glanced down at her glowing screen and emitted a sharp squeak.
Nova checked his own device and produced a distinctly different vocalization that conveyed the exact same emergency data.
"We-"
"-must immediately arrive at-"
"-yeah."
What followed was the frantic, hyper-accelerated choreography of two combatants blessed with superhuman speed attempting to rapidly strip out of heavy training gear and back into standard academy uniforms while out in the open woods. Nova strode back to his designated tree line. Ruby successfully executed a lightning-fast wardrobe change in the clearing in roughly eleven seconds flat-a personal record she immediately locked away in her mind without any intention of ever speaking of it.
Unfortunately, as she reached for her school jacket, she realized a minor operational oversight: in her blind panic, she had slipped the thirty-pound gi right back on underneath her standard uniform layers.
This proved to be an utterly disastrous solution. The reinforced fabric was dense, heavy, and pressing directly against her skin beneath her school blazer, radiating its full weight with every single step she took. She now had roughly forty-five minutes of steady, uphill hiking ahead of her just to make it back through the gates of Beacon.
Across the clearing, she heard Nova emit a low, deeply muffled groan that signaled he had arrived at the exact same logistical dead-end.
"I observe that you have elected to wear your heavy training equipment home as well," she called out brightly.
"Do not acknowledge it," came his flat, defensive reply from the trees.
"Matching operational uniforms," she taunted with a bright, victorious grin.
"Ruby."
She laughed, shaking her head, and broke into a brisk, purposeful stride back toward the academy.
---
Part IV - The Binder
Location: Beacon Academy Cafeteria | Midday
The main cafeteria at peak operating capacity hummed with the high-frequency operational noise of over a hundred students who had endured a full morning of grueling classes and were now fiercely engaged in the essential ritual of metabolic refueling and social decompression before the afternoon session.
Teams RWBY, JNPR, and NDTSA had instinctively colonized their customary cluster of joined tables with the practiced efficiency of a unit that operated entirely on muscle memory-Ruby and Yang staking out one side, Weiss and Blake occupying the opposite flank, and Nova alongside Turuk anchoring the end. The rest of Team NDTSA branched out to seamlessly integrate with Team JNPR, where Nora was already animating an elaborate story for Ren using the eccentric hand-gesture vocabulary she reserved exclusively for narratives requiring full physical demonstration.
Yang casually launched a green grape into the air and snapped it out of mid-flight with her teeth.
Nora immediately mirrored the move, loading a fresh projectile.
Blake had her nose buried in a thick, unassuming paperback, executing the defensive maneuver of someone who was aggressively reading and making it explicitly clear she wished to remain undisturbed-which, naturally, served as an open invitation for Yang to slide down the bench.
"What riveting literature are we hiding over there?" Yang inquired brightly.
Blake's book snapped shut with a sharp, lethal clap that implied it had been anticipating the interruption. "Class notes from last semester."
"Boring," Yang critiqued, snagging another grape.
"I can visually confirm your notes from last semester, Blake," Weiss interjected coolly without lifting her eyes from her own open ledger. "They are currently housed in a crimson binder with the academic year stamped across the spine in gold leaf. That binder has a distinct coffee stain on the back cover."
Blake stared at Weiss.
Weiss calmly continued reading.
Blake's jaw tightened by a fraction of a millimeter.
Before hostilities could escalate, a massive, heavily modified binder dropped onto the center of the table with the decisive thud of a legal indictment. It was oversized, aggressively color-coded with sticky tabs, and featured a cover originally inscribed in neat, block lettering: VYTAL FESTIVAL ACTIVITIES: PROPERTY OF WEISS SCHNEE. That title, however, had been viciously slashed out with a thick red marker and replaced by BEST DAY EVER ACTIVITIES, scrawled in an energetic, chaotic hand that radiated the distinct frantic energy of someone writing at Mach 3.
Ruby stood up on top of the bench, towering over the assembly.
"Sisters," she announced with the dramatic gravity of a summit negotiator. "Comrades." She paused for effect. "Weiss."
"Hey!"
"Four score and seven minutes ago-"
Across the table, Nova exchanged a quiet, sideways glance with Turuk, who silently pivoted his gaze toward Scarlett, already suppressing a wide grin.
"-I had a magnificent vision," Ruby continued, her voice swelling with prophetic zeal.
Yang casually elbowed Nova with the comfortable swagger of someone who knew the script by heart and was settling in for the show. "This ought to be an absolute trainwreck."
"Knowing Ruby," Nova murmured, his tone reflecting a year's worth of accumulated tactical data, "one must always prepare for the statistically impossible." He paused, blinking slowly. "I have more or less accepted that this is simply our baseline operating reality."
"We all reached that acceptance stage months ago," Turuk confirmed dryly.
"There's never a dull rotation when she gets a conceptual spark," Daikon observed.
"Never," Aiko echoed, her tone laced with nervous apprehension.
"And I think it's fantastic," Scarlett chimed in, grinning broadly. "I enthusiastically endorse whatever unhinged plan she's about to unleash."
"A vision, " Ruby pressed on, driving her point home with absolute conviction, "that one day the four teams-all of us, every single seventeen of us-will rally together as an unstoppable collective and experience the single greatest, most fun day in the history of Beacon Academy. Ever."
Weiss stared down at the customized binder. "Did you literally steal my personal planning portfolio?"
Ruby threw up two peace signs, grinning like a maniac. "I am not a crook."
"It literally has my family crest stamped on the-"
"I am talking about properly inaugurating this new semester!" Ruby declared, throwing her hands wide. "Classes officially resume tomorrow morning. Which means today is our final window of freedom before the academic machine consumes our lives again. Therefore, I have meticulously organized-" she flipped the binder open to a violently color-coded itinerary tab "-a series of high-octane recreational exercises, mathematically optimized for maximum team bonding and elite-tier fun."
"I always kick off my semesters with a bang-specifically, a Yang!" Yang declared, dropping a punchline with the unearned confidence of someone who had been rehearsing it since breakfast. "Eh? Anyone? Am I right?"
The heavy, dead silence that followed was the distinct silence of a group of tactical professionals collectively deciding to execute a tactical retreat from a terrible pun.
Several hands rose in unison to massage various temples.
Nova stared fixedly at the wood-grain table surface.
"Should we intervene?" Turuk whispered out of the side of his mouth.
"Negative," Nova whispered back.
"But that was objectively-"
"I am aware. We maintain radio silence."
A crisp red apple materialized out of nowhere, launched with pinpoint accuracy from Nora's end of the table, and connected squarely with Yang's forehead with a hollow thump.
"Boooo!" Nora yelled cheerfully.
Yang shot a mock-deadly glare down the line.
Ruby capitalized on the brief distraction, hammering her point home. "Thank you for the punctuation, Nora! Look, guys-we have roughly two weeks before the Vytal Festival madness descends upon us. Things are going to get suffocatingly complicated, international delegations are arriving, tournament brackets are locking in, and our stress levels are going to max out. But today-" She jabbed a finger down, pointing directly at each member in sequence, sweeping across to Nova's squad. "-today belongs entirely to us. All of us. Together. Agreed?"
"I fluctuate between wanting to frame you and wanting to lock you in a secure vault," Weiss sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Feel free to experience both emotions simultaneously!" Ruby beamed.
"Look at it this way, Princess," Daikon drawled, timing his delivery with the practiced ease of an operative who knew precisely which buttons to push to trigger an immediate reaction, "whatever chaotic nightmare Ruby has engineered, it is mathematically guaranteed to be more entertaining than listening to-"
"Do not call me that," Weiss snapped, spinning around in her seat with the sudden thermal output of a plasma torch, fully prepared to rehash an argument they had run through a dozen times before.
"Oh? My apologies. Did I misplace a term of endearment?" Daikon tilted his head innocently. "It's right on the tip of my tongue. Something aristocratic, something dripping with royal entitlement-"
"I am going to physically-"
"Princess?"
An invisible static charge seemed to arc across the space separating them-metaphorical friction, certainly, but carrying enough atmospheric pressure to feel entirely tangible.
Yang watched the sparring match unfold, glanced sideways at Turuk, and then back at the escalating argument.
"Does this verbal ping-pong ever actually resolve anywhere?" she asked, leaning her chin in her hand.
"He eventually manages to pry a smile out of her," Turuk replied evenly. "Though it usually requires several more rounds of verbal sparring."
Yang observed Weiss's facial expression rapidly cycle through righteous fury, absolute indignation, and finally graze the dangerous, trembling edge of suppressed amusement. "Huh," she mused. "What's his strategy there?"
"Persistence," Turuk said simply. "Caring enough to keep showing up until she stops fighting it."
Yang looked over at him.
He was staring down at his meal with the quiet, anchored composure of a man who had stated a fundamental truth and felt zero compulsion to elaborate or fish for validation.
She shifted her gaze back to the table center.
"Blake is still entirely committed to pretending she hates fun, isn't she?" Yang asked, abruptly pivoting the conversational vector.
"Blake will participate," Turuk answered without missing a beat. "She simply refuses to sign any pre-approval forms."
"That is aggressively on-brand for her."
"Yes," he agreed quietly. "It really is."
---
Part V - What Sun Told Neptune
Location: The Corridor Outside the Cafeteria | Shortly Before
Sun Wukong was fundamentally a man who operated with his entire physical presence. Consequently, recounting the chaotic aftermath of the dock fight during their approach to the cafeteria involved a sprawling, animated multimedia performance utilizing both hands and easily double his normal personal radius.
"-and then the damn banana peel literally hit his head, and the guy paused, looked up, and boom-right there I was-"
Neptune Vasilias strolled alongside him, maintaining the relaxed, breezy posture of a seasoned audience member who had listened to Sun's cinematic exaggerations a thousand times and calibrated his responses accordingly. "Smooth."
"It was objectively smooth, thank you very much," Sun countered, executing a neat pivot to pantomime the staff-deployment. "Then I dropped down on his face, boots-first, and-"
"And the girl? Blake?"
Sun's momentum hitched. The frantic hand-gesturing abruptly ceased, restarting a second later at a distinctly subdued rhythm.
"Yeah. Blake was-she was locking horns with the guy directly. Which is insane, because the guy with the cane is fast. Not just Huntsman fast-actually, terrifyingly fast." He paused, chewing the inside of his cheek. "She held her ground for a solid stretch."
"But?" Neptune prompted, reading the unspoken hesitation with the easy intuition of someone who knew the exact cadence of his friend's inner monologue.
"But then her brother dropped in."
"Her brother?"
"Nova." Sun's expression underwent a rapid metamorphosis, locking into that specific cocktail of fierce respect and low-key awe reserved for anomalies that shattered his entire frame of reference. "Bro. I've seen people fight. I've thrown hands in street brawls myself. I've watched Sun Wukong-that's me-take down guys twice my size and walk away. But what I watched Nova do to that enforcer..." He shook his head, whistling through his teeth. "The guy insulted him, called him a monkey, and it was like someone flipped an absolute breaker inside his skull. It was unreal. And honestly? Kind of terrifying."
Neptune processed the input. "Terrifying in a constructive way, or a systemic hazard way?"
"Good. Definitely good. He was shielding Blake, and the second Ruby was exposed, he shifted to cover her, and the whole time it looked like-" Sun waved a hand, searching for a fitting analogy. "You know how some fighters move like they're performing for an audience? And others fight like they're just punching a clock? Nova fights like he was biologically engineered for it. Not in a bloodthirsty way, either. In a way that makes you feel-" He hesitated. "I don't know. Just deeply grateful he's standing on the right side of the board."
"That is generally the preferred side to be on," Neptune agreed.
"Yeah." Sun walked in silence for a few paces. "He's one of Blake's brothers. Adopted, not blood-related-she told me. But you'd never guess it by looking at them." A beat of reflection. "She cares about those guys the way you only care about people who didn't have to choose you, but did anyway."
Neptune glanced sideways at his friend.
"You really are completely gone on this girl, aren't you?"
Sun's golden prehensile tail lashed behind him in a sharp arc. "Shut up."
"I am merely offering objective sociological observations."
"You have a uniquely irritating way of observing things."
"It's an advanced technical skill." Neptune flashed a grin. "What's she actually like? Outside of the combat zones."
Sun considered the question with a rare, unexpected gravity, peeling back his usual hyperactive exterior. "Quiet," he murmured. "In the way people are quiet when they listen twice as much as they talk because their minds are running circles around everyone else. She reads constantly-real physical books, not just digital scrolls. She keeps these cat ears hidden beneath a bow on top of her head. She doesn't talk about them, but they twitch and pivot whenever something captures her focus, which means you can always tell precisely what she's tracking." He paused, a faint frown touching his brow. "She also has this habit of acting like everything is completely fine right up until the point it isn't, and then she tucks tail and runs instead of standing her ground, which-" He made a frustrated chopping motion. "I think she's trying to break that habit. But unlearning it is a process."
Neptune studied his friend's expression.
"Yeah," he noted quietly. "You're definitely hooked."
Sun stared up at the heavy double doors of the cafeteria ahead, through which an ominous, rising cacophony-sounding suspiciously like high-velocity kitchenware-was beginning to bleed. "I just... I don't want to screw it up," he admitted, his voice dropping its usual bravado. "The people in there-Ruby, Nova, the whole crew-they're the real deal. The kind of circle that makes you want to step up your game, you know? Because they're already operating at a higher standard." He reached out, his hand hovering over the push-bar. "So. Act cool. Please."
"I am, by molecular definition, perpetually cool," Neptune declared, exposing a flash of pristine white teeth at an angle Sun had mathematically proven defied the laws of physics.
"Right, okay, just-"
The doors swung inward.
At that exact microsecond, the cafeteria was aggressively failing to be cool.
A stray apple hurtled past their heads at Mach speed. An entire roasted turkey embedded itself into the structural wall directly to the left of the doorframe. Poor Jaune Arc came skidding sideways across the windowpane to the right, plastered against the glass with the tragic posture of a man who had lost all control of his vector.
Sun and Neptune froze in the threshold, absorbing the apocalyptic vista.
"What in the absolute-" Sun stammered.
"I love this academy," Neptune stated with absolute, unwavering conviction.
Part VI - The Food Fight
As with most monumental shifts in the historical trajectory of Ruby Rose's life, this particular catastrophe originated from a foundation of pure, unadulterated good intentions paired with catastrophic execution.
The artisanal pie had been Nora Valkyrie's conversational contribution to the table-a contribution delivered exclusively via airborne trajectory, connecting squarely with Weiss Schnee's immaculate face with the punctuation-mark certainty of a thrown brick.
Weiss stood entirely motionless for one terrifying, crystal-clear second.
The smile that slowly bloomed across her features was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a happy smile. It was the terrifying, seraphic smile of a young woman who had just diagnosed an unacceptable variable and committed her entire soul to eradicating it.
The rhythmic twitch in her left eyebrow served as the launch countdown.
By the time Ruby scrambled triumphantly onto the center bench, hoisting her customized planning binder aloft with a manic gleam in her silver eyes, the entire cafeteria had already silently fractured along unspoken tactical fault lines.
"Justice!" Ruby announced from her high perch, channeling the dramatic gravitas of someone who had rehearsed this exact speech in front of the mirror for three consecutive weeks. "Justice will be swift! Justice will be merciless!" She dramatically crushed a paper milk carton in her fist, sending a white splash spraying in four directions. "And it will be delicious!"
Across the expansive hall, Nora Valkyrie leaped off a towering barricade of stacked cafeteria tables with the kinetic energy of an enthusiastic natural disaster.
"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!"
The room plunged headfirst into total war.
What transpired over the next eight minutes belongs rightfully in the annals of Beacon Academy lore as a masterclass in controlled structural chaos.
Ruby whipped around, jointing a finger toward the massive roasted turkeys resting on the service counter with supreme field-marshal authority. "Yang! Nova! Turuk-deploy the poultry!"
"On it," three voices chimed in absolute, synchronized harmony-a terrifyingly efficient reflex that nobody present even questioned anymore.
Yang dropped into a low slide, snatched up the nearest turkey by its legs, and drove her fists into the dense meat with the toothy grin of a brawler who had finally located an acceptable outlet for a week's worth of pent-up kinetic charge. Nova mirrored the maneuver on her flank, the two of them driving forward in a synchronized wedge aimed directly at Daikon and Scarlett with a terrifying level of tactical coordination.
Daikon had already secured his own avian projectile.
Scarlett had mirrored him with a second bird.
All four operatives locked eyes across the open floor with the mutual, shared recognition of fighters who knew their plan was utterly ridiculous and had decided to lean into the absurdity with absolute commitment.
"This," Daikon declared loudly over the din, "is easily the most idiotic order I have ever executed."
"Same here!" Scarlett yelled back, grinning like a madwoman.
They closed the distance anyway, achieving that rare, transcendent state of glory that only manifests when an entire squad collectively abandons their dignity in pursuit of pure, unadulterated chaos.
At the epicenter of the storm, Nora swung her iconic melon-on-a-pole in a devastating arc, targeting a crimson-haired faunus who had materialized out of nowhere brandishing a French baguette that possessed structural integrity entirely defying the laws of physics. The bread somehow blocked the melon impact without fracturing. Aiko was executing the tight, compact footwork drilled into her by years of rigorous discipline, treating the carb-loaded weapon like an elite polearm.
"That bread," Sun gasped from the doorway, his jaw slack, "should not legally be that dense!"
Neptune, silently pulling out a mental notepad, made no comment.
Yang took the kinetic shock of a missed melon strike meant for Aiko, absorbing the impact with the reckless instinct of a brawler who moved toward incoming force rather than away from it-punching clean through the ceiling plaster with a thunderous roar.
Nora blinked up at the new drywall breach.
Aiko peered through the hole as well.
"She'll be back down in three seconds," Aiko predicted with the absolute, deadpan certainty of someone who had studied Yang Xiao Long's behavioral loops. "Gravity is merely a polite suggestion to her."
Nora immediately grabbed a spare string of raw sausages and prepared an anti-aircraft sweep.
Meanwhile, the theater of condiment warfare had escalated exponentially.
Turuk and Daikon, having rapidly realized that heavy poultry made for poor ranged artillery, had transitioned to heavy-artillery mustard and ketchup squeezers around the third engagement wave. The operation was proceeding with terrifying efficiency until the linoleum floor became an engineered hazard zone.
Turuk's combat boot hit a slick puddle of ketchup at the exact millisecond Daikon planted his foot in a massive pool of yellow mustard. The ensuing physical collision possessed the devastating momentum of two heavy objects hurtling along intersecting vectors at terminal velocity.
The resulting sound when Turuk, Daikon, and an unfortunate Scarlett-who had happened to cross their firing line-collided was almost indistinguishable from a bowling strike.
Turuk hauled himself up first, wiping a streak of spicy mustard off his forehead with the back of his forearm. He stared down at his brother.
"Never," Turuk stated with chilling precision, "engage in a condiment skirmish with Daikon."
A few feet away, Nova stood entirely untouched, maintaining a deadpan expression with visibly strained effort. "Protocol noted."
From the floor, flat on his back, Daikon offered zero defense-which under the circumstances was the most dignified course of action.
The room had officially crossed the event horizon into total, unadulterated pandemonium.
Pyrrha, having been violently blasted backward into a massive industrial soda machine, apparently decided this specific appliance served as a prime magnetic anchor for her Semblance. Instantly, every metallic asset across the cafeteria-aluminum cans, stainless steel trays, cutlery, and serving platters-ignited with a blue glow and began screaming through the air toward her outstretched hands.
Ruby tracked the shifting metal ecosystem, her eyes darting across the hall.
She locked gazes with Nova.
He was already looking at her, his dark eyes registering the incoming storm with total, calm readiness. A subtle nod of his head delivered the silent authorization: Your play.
She snatched up a heavy stainless-steel serving tray. Dropping her weight into a deep, stable crouch, she locked her core-relying precisely on the biomechanical fundamentals he had drilled into her that very morning. She looked at Nova. He looked back.
Without a word, he executed a short, sharp pulse of ki-not a physical shove, but a concentrated kinetic nudge directly against the nascent rotation of her energy field.
Ruby's Semblance detonated.
She launched off the floor, leaving a brilliant swirl of rose petals in her wake, screaming vertically up the wall, capturing the kinetic overflow, and spiraling outward across the entire volume of the cafeteria in a roaring vortex that dragged every loose projectile-soda cans, condiment bottles, stray melons-into a centralized storm eye revolving around her flight path.
She broke off the wall at terminal velocity.
The tempest collided with Pyrrha's metallic array in a glorious, multi-colored detonation of impact physics.
For one fleeting microsecond, the sheer kinetic pressure plastered the outlines of every combatant against the surrounding walls.
Then, gravity reclaimed them.
Ruby dropped cleanly to the floor in front of her team's zone, executing a low, three-point tactical crouch, one hand planted firmly on the linoleum, the other flashing a sharp peace sign as her cape fluttered dramatically in the post-impact draft.
"Mission accomplished!" she declared triumphantly.
Her silver gaze snapped up to find Nova.
He was watching her with that rare, genuine expression of quiet satisfaction-the one she had spent the last year cataloging as her favorite badge of validation.
She raised her fist across the ruined space.
Nova pushed off the floor, closed the gap without breaking stride, and knocked his knuckles firmly against hers.
"Solid execution," he allowed.
"You're welcome, Nova-san," she beamed, deploying the honorific she had been saving for maximum tactical impact.
He froze for a fraction of a second, glaring at the suffix.
"Do not start that," he warned flatly.
"Too late," she laughed, bouncing on her heels. "The precedent has been established."
He stared at her for a long, unblinking beat-the heavy, quiet look that usually signaled he was entirely out of defenses-before reaching out to gently mess up her messy black-and-red hair.
Ruby's smile could have powered the CCT tower.
"I genuinely love these guys," Sun whispered from the doorway, shaking his head.
Neptune, currently drenched head-to-toe in strawberry soda from an aluminum can that had orbited through his airspace during the final vortex, offered zero response-he was too busy trying to preserve his dignity.
---
Part VII - Glynda
The heavy doors groaned inward.
The cafeteria instantaneously transitioned from absolute, roaring pandemonium to a dead, suffocating silence-the precise acoustic signature of individuals caught red-handed in flagrante delicto.
Glynda Goodwitch stepped across the threshold with the measured, terrifying stride of an authority figure who saw no reason to rush, simply because running would imply she hadn't already cataloged every single infraction that had occurred over the last ten minutes. And she had. And she was preparing to process them accordingly.
Her emerald gaze swept methodically across the devastation-the soda-varnished walls, the structural indentations of bodies plastered against the drywall, the turkey-carcass debris field, the tactical smear of condiment topography, and the overarching aesthetic of a mess hall that had weathered a minor military siege.
She observed the students.
The students desperately observed anything else.
Nora produced a loud, highly inappropriate burp.
Everyone else scrambled to assemble a veneer of innocent composure, yielding wildly varying degrees of success that skewed heavily toward utter failure. Ruby pressed both hands rigidly over her mouth. Scarlett stared fixedly at the vaulted ceiling rafters. Turuk became utterly transfixed by a speck of dust on the toe of his right boot. Daikon's expression remained entirely flat, a monument to psychological self-preservation that required active, visible effort.
Weiss was currently working overtime to project the aura of an aristocratic scholar who had never so much as touched an airborne carb. Unfortunately, this performance was severely undermined by a large dollop of strawberry pie filling stubbornly plastered directly into her immaculate white hair.
"Children." Glynda's voice carried the controlled, icy vibration of a tectonic plate on the verge of fracturing. With a single, elegant finger, she reached up and adjusted the bridge of her spectacles. "Please. Do not play with your victuals."
At that exact microsecond, the ceiling directly above her caved in with a thunderous crack as Yang Xiao Long dropped vertically from the upper floor, landing squarely on an overturned cafeteria table with the utterly unconvincing poise of someone who had definitely been standing up there the entire time and was certainly not returning from a brief orbital excursion.
Glynda slowly shifted her gaze to Yang.
Yang offered a blinding, utterly unapologetic thumbs-up.
Glynda emitted a low, hybrid sound that sat somewhere precisely between a tragic sigh of exhaustion and a structural complaint from a failing load-bearing wall.
A heavy hand settled gently onto her shoulder.
"Let it go, Glynda," Ozpin murmured softly, leaning on his cane.
"They are supposed to be training to become," Glynda argued, gesturing stiffly toward the flour-dusted, syrup-spattered collection of teenagers-Teams RWBY, JNPR, and NDTSA, who were currently radiating the high-altitude endorphins of people who had just experienced the greatest time of their lives-"defenders of a fractured world."
"And they will be," Ozpin replied, his eyes softening as he surveyed the chaotic group. "But right now, they are children. Let them play the part while they still have the luxury." He turned, taking a slow step toward the exit. "It isn't a costume they'll get to wear forever."
He began walking back down the corridor.
Glynda lingered for one more beat-watching as the kids instinctively gravitated toward each other, laughing, hauling their friends up from the linoleum, and tossing one final, defiant parting grape across the room before catching her glare and freezing. She sighed, her rigid posture softening by a fraction, and turned to follow her headmaster.
Professors Rhubar and Sala smoothly dropped into step beside them in the corridor.
Rhubar produced a muffled sound that was several conflicting emotions colliding violently-professional decorum, genuine paternal amusement, and the lingering kinetic shock of a spectacle that demanded absolute tactical suppression.
"You have to concede," he muttered under his breath, pausing to contain a fresh wave of air, "that was-truly-remarkable."
Sala turned her head, fixing him with the mild, disapproving glare she reserved exclusively for when he abandoned his dignity-though her own lips were twitching betrayingly. "Dear."
"I am merely providing an objective pedagogical assessment regarding creative tactical application of-" A distinctly undignified snort broke through his attempt at a cough.
Sala pressed her lips into a tight, white line. She looked straight ahead at the corridor wall. Then she glanced sideways at her husband.
She completely surrendered.
The two veteran Saiyan instructors were quietly, uncontrollably wheezing with laughter by the time they rounded the corner-the unstoppable, bubbling amusement that hits when you witness something so brilliantly unhinged it bypasses all professional filters.
Glynda marched ahead of them, maintaining an ironclad mask of stone-faced professorial severity.
Then, just as she cleared the end of the hall, a tiny, involuntary twitch caught the corner of her mouth, curving upward into a very brief, highly classified smile that she instantly banished before anyone could bear witness.
She was, after all, the academy's strictest disciplinarian.
...Though, admittedly, she thought, the binder system was remarkably thorough.
Part VIII - Mercury's Memory
Location: White Fang Warehouse, Vale | That Evening
The cavernous industrial warehouse possessed the functional, oppressive gloom of a space dedicated strictly to holding contraband on a temporary basis. Roman Torchwick paced its perimeter with the proprietary, mocking confidence of a career criminal who treated every square foot he inhabited as his personal stage-at least until higher management reminded him otherwise.
He caught Emerald and Mercury stepping out of the shadows near the primary loading bay.
"Well, look at what the stray cat dragged back," he drawled pleasantly, spreading his arms wide with the theatrical warmth of a stage actor performing enthusiasm at roughly twenty percent capacity. "If it isn't the dynamic duo. Just like a messy divorce."
Emerald's skin physically rippled with revulsion. She took two sharp steps to the side, executing the body language of someone trying to decontaminate themselves from a toxic biohazard. "Do us all a favor and never speak the word procreating again."
"That was a comedic observation," Roman scoffed, pulling a crumpled manifest slip from his tailored jacket. He glanced down at it, blinked, looked over at Emerald, and then stared back at the paper. "This document, however, informs me that you two spent your entire afternoon gallivanting somewhere you were explicitly instructed not to be. Why do you happen to possess this specific sector address?"
"Oh, you know," Emerald purred, her eyes glinting dangerously. "Just sightseeing."
"I would love to be sighted in on the details! Hence my inquiry." Roman flicked his gaze toward Mercury, who was leaning indolently against a steel support beam with his arms folded across his chest, staring into a middle distance entirely detached from the current spatial-temporal reality. "Mercury. Earth to the kid. Focus."
"Hm?"
"Where, " Emerald demanded, dropping her smooth facade and adopting the sharp, high-alert edge of someone who had spent the entire day pulling her partner back from the brink of dissociation, "have you been all afternoon, Mercury."
He pushed off the pillar, his physical alignment snapping back into sharp, present-tense focus. "We handled a loose thread for you," he informed Roman flatly, jerking a thumb backward. "That book dealer down in the commercial district. The one who was planning to skip town with our shipping manifests."
Roman's smirk faltered slightly. "I had a handle on-"
"Two packed suitcases and a one-way ticket to Vacuo argued otherwise," Mercury cut him off, his tone entirely devoid of warmth. "Past tense, Boss."
Roman closed the distance, bristling with the petty indignation of a man acutely aware that the teenager standing in front of him could casually shatter his jaw, yet choosing to posture anyway. "Listen to me, you little-"
"Do what, exactly, Roman?"
The voice drifting down from the upper gantry was smooth, crystalline, and laced with that specific, ambient lethality that characterized extreme danger packaged in absolute calm. Cinder Fall descended slowly on the heavy cargo lift, moving with the unhurried certainty of a queen who knew the entire room rearranged itself the second she entered its gravitational pull.
Roman instantly flattened his expression, pivoting into a slick, self-deprecating laugh. "Ah, Cinder! I was merely... assuring the children that we appreciate their field initiative. Definitely that."
"Cinder!" Emerald stepped forward instantly, her posture shedding its defensive edge and melting into the absolute, devoted eagerness she reserved for no one else in the world.
Cinder's amber eyes slid past Emerald, locking onto Roman with the clinical detachment of an accountant auditing a failing ledger. "My understanding was that you had already resolved the Tukson complication."
"I was on my way to-"
"He was actively booking passage to Vacuo," Emerald interjected smoothly. "We took preventive measures."
"And that tactical decision," Cinder stated softly, stepping off the platform and fixing both of them with a gaze that felt like a physical drop in temperature, "was not yours to execute. I gave explicit, unambiguous orders to maintain absolute discretion in Vale. Was I unclear?"
"No, ma'am," Emerald murmured instantly, bowing her head with the absolute submission of a true believer.
"Then we will not revisit this error." Cinder pivoted, transferring her attention to Roman with the fluid grace of a predator shifting targets. "Phase two is moving forward. Do you have what is required from the dust shipment?"
"Sufficient reserves to proceed," Roman lied smoothly, though a subtle twitch in his posture betrayed his underlying anxiety. "Though we did encounter certain... unforeseen variables."
"The Belladonna boy," Cinder stated. It wasn't an interrogation; it was an entry in a catalog.
"The kid hits like a freight train," Roman muttered, instinctively touching his lower jaw, which still harbored strong, painful opinions about their previous encounter. "And he apparently takes intense, highly personal offense at baseline racial slurs."
"I have logged the data," Cinder replied, her expression smooth.
She turned and drifted gracefully toward the upper residential gallery. Emerald fell in step directly behind her like a shadow, their voices dissolving into the high rafters of the warehouse architecture.
Mercury remained rooted to the concrete floor.
He had been anchored to this specific internal void for days now-trapped in a mental static that was rapidly growing impossible to ignore.
He knew Emerald had been tracking the micro-expressions on his face, which meant whatever internal friction he was experiencing was bleeding through his defenses-a deeply infuriating realization for a guy who had spent years mastering the art of total facial lockdown. The fact that his mind was leaking past his control meant the disturbance had outgrown his standard psychological countermeasures.
He didn't even know what the anomaly was.
That was the most maddening part of the equation.
He understood his own curated history perfectly-the specific, brutal timeline that began the day Cinder found him in the gutter and mapped out a logical trajectory from there. What he lacked, and what he hadn't realized was missing until the fractures started forming, was anything existing before that zero point.
Not absolute nothingness. That was the wrong descriptor. It was more akin to low-grade electronic static-a recurring frequency that occasionally threatened to resolve into a distinct, high-definition image before abruptly scrambling itself back into white noise right as he tried to focus.
A house. Sunlit green grass. A bright blue sky. A child's voice-young, female, carrying the resonant, haunting clarity of a memory desperately trying to break through a locked door.
Let's make a promise, the voice rang out.
Okay, young Mercury's voice piped back, hesitant yet willing. What kind of promise?
Let's promise that we'll always-
A sharp, white-hot spike of cranial agony detonated behind his eyes, wiping the audio clean as the memory violently snapped under pressure.
Mercury hissed through his teeth, pressing two knuckles hard against his temple as he forced his breathing to steady.
"Mercury."
He blinked, snapping his eyes open.
Emerald was standing halfway up the metal staircase, looking down at him with that complex, guarded expression she wore whenever she was trying to calculate how to handle him. "We're moving out."
"Yeah," he muttered, dropping his hand. "Right behind you."
He pushed himself away from the support column and fell into step.
The throbbing in his skull subsided as he walked-as it always did-leaving behind the cold, hollow residue of an unresolved ghost. A question without a geometry. An answer without a prompt. Red hair flashing in the sun. A voice he almost recognized. A vow he wasn't permitted to hear the end of.
He was going to have to track down the source of the static. He was going to have to dig.
Because the alternative-remaining trapped in a manufactured fog he couldn't control-was rapidly becoming entirely intolerable.
★ END OF CHAPTER EIGHT ★
---
Next: Chapter Nine- "Welcome to Beacon: Confrontation With the Past"
Author's Note
Hey guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter! So I figured we'd go in a bit of a different direction with Mercury. And yes, he is going to be good this time. Him and Emerald are just doing the ol' switcheroo of roles! Meaning Mercury turns good, while Emerald stays evil.
Obviously from the flashback in his head, you guys may be able to more or less tell who the girl in his memories is. But for the plot's sake, I won't spoil it. I just have to come up with a way to have Mercury turn good. Let's just say his turn into a good guy or hero will be gradual, not immediate. There's a certain interaction in the future that will speed along his turncoat transformation from villain to hero.
Anyways, that's all for now. Until next time!