aiko's otter den
black cat's curses 4
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black cat's curses - Blake Belladonna is not a faunus.
4. The Grim Reaper
Ruby awoke that morning and her head was clear. She wasn’t any less terrified, of course not, but the excitement of killing Grimm overwhelmed the fear, the excitement of being able to act was everything she needed to push on.
She bounced about the room, which was how she caught a glimpse of Blake, staring at her with wide golden eyes with slit pupils. She looked baffled, at least that was Ruby’s best guess. Her face was as inscrutable as Tailmon’s had been, but she thought that much like Tailmon, she could understand it.
“Morning,” she said with a smile.
The eyes narrowed back into something that should be, or was, well, more accurate to the cat’s personality. “Good morning,” she said, voice low and suspicious. “You seem cheerful.”
Hikari — Ruby, she was Ruby Rose, she fought Grimm and flew in the sky — only smiled again back at her, a hair brighter this time for extra discomfort. “Why wouldn’t I be?! It’s a new day, I’m leading a team and there’s gotta be cookies at breakfast! What could go wrong?”
Everything, said her brain without sympathy. She, as she had before, did her best to ignore it, it had been easier when she was young and it was just uncle and dad and Yang and Patch because everything needed doing, needed fighting, needed killing, needed caring, so there was no time for her anxiety to rear its ugly head.
Ugh, even hunter school was going to be a drag wasn’t it? No, no she couldn’t talk like that. That wasn’t how it worked. It couldn’t work that way. It was better.
Putting that properly out of her head, Ruby grabbed the sides of the ladder and threw herself up onto the top bunk, landing squarely on her sister’s chest with a delighted shout.
Weiss let out a very unladylike word as Yang cursed and rolled with her onto the floor with a heavy thud, the two of them laughing and screeching in the early morning sun.
Ruby laughed a bit loudly, a bit too gleefully, but she was still a child, so it was allowed, even in this world where children were a dirty word and a mockery no matter where you lived. She didn’t care, she was still a child. She declared. “I’ll get you this time.”
Yang said something to the equivalent of, “In a thousand years maybe!” and rolled to pin her into the dirt, er carpet. It didn’t matter. The battle was on!
And Blake watched. She did not look away.
This warmed Ruby’s heart, and reminded Hikari that indeed she had a soul after all.
For a moment, as they wandered the halls of Beacon Academy, Blake thought it was the year 2002 all over again and she was expected to hide in a bag from the other students and keep quiet in a classroom and subsist on human junk food. But no, instead she was given books and a scroll that gave her palms a terrifying warmth.
Just a scroll, she reminded herself, just a scroll. No destiny inducer, no cause of suffering. Just a communication device.
She’d thought she’d almost convinced herself over the next few days.
Then a mission appeared on screen in the middle of her afternoon reading and she changed her mind entirely.
A different Grimm from the norm has appeared at our western border, observe, report, and if possible, neutralize.
It didn’t sound too difficult, in fairness. Blake had combat experience, really, they all did, if that initiation test was anything to go by. But the four of them plus a professor on an unusual enemy? This was either extremely overkill or not enough firepower.
And considering they were stuck with Oobleck, who seemed more interested in the dusty tome in his hands and taking notes on his scroll than actual combat, she wasn’t entirely sure that they had enough firepower. But, she supposed he had to have been a valuable Huntsman at some point in his career, enough to actually keep him alive, surely.
But still. A chill ran down her spine and she couldn’t imagine why.
Not that the others seemed concerned. The only one she’d kept particularly close to was Yang, if only because Ruby kept looking at her in some way through her hair, or the way their eyes wandered, just so. But Blake kept her cloak on with her bow, even while sleeping, and nothing was said. Even though Weiss’s nose seemed to twitch at the rattiness of the thing. But it had been patched and sewn and played on and kept her warm, and that was all she needed.
“We’re Huntresses,” the heir of the richest dust company that owned more slaves than it did Dust mines told her. “We are a symbol of safety for the people. We must act as such.”
Blake couldn’t help herself, she laughed in the girl’s face and settled into her seat on the plane.
It was an Adam sound, and she regretted it immediately. But, she wasn’t Adam, and some part of her wondered if Adam was right. If people like Weiss were what made him right.
Neither she nor Tailmon had an answer to that either. And she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to apologize for making it.
The plane landed a good distance away from the exact location, which was fine because Aura got you places normal legs couldn’t. Just because the Grimm relied on misery and negative emotions for most things didn’t mean that they couldn’t smell people.
“All right now,” the professor began, his pompous voice turning to something sharp as the copter began to descend. “You know the order. Observe, put your scrolls on verbal record and be careful when moving. You must be serene as a flowing river to keep safe from the Grimm’s tracking capabilities. That includes you, Miss Xiao Long.”
“Serene pool, got it.” Yang saluted with a hand and Blake hid a smile at the tick developing by the man’s right eye.
“Professor,” Weiss began, hand twitching towards the air but pausing at the last moment, neatly folded into her lap once more. “How much analysis is necessary? The Grimm isn’t close to city limits as of yet, however…” She trailed off seeing the man prepared to answer. Yang and Ruby were busy looking out the windows but Blake was watching Oobleck, eager for human rationale.
Then Ruby said, so softly Blake almost thought her human ears had misheard. “Greymon?”