Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wet, cold, and windy. Three things which should not have been a deterrent for a Huntress.

Ruby’s scythe slashed, stabbed, shot, loud songs of noise in their wake.

Should not, anyway.

Maria exploded from direction to direction, rock and stone exploding under her in waves of aggressive movement.

But it did have a habit of seeping into the worst knocks and caverns.

Cinder yelled, screamed, and hissed, burning flame upon rock without kindling until nothing more could be found.

The Hunt had gone well. It was supposed to have, as they all knew, but it did leave them in a certain distress.

Solitas was unforgiving, they all knew as such, but where Solitas was cold, brutal, and frigid always, Sanus was not. Sanus was, to use Cinder’s verbiage, a disgruntled mess of feelings none of which were likeable.

Such being said, as the Huntresses fought through their Hunt, all too soon did the hot weathered season turn from the kindred light of the sun and warm sea winds to… well… something worse.

Winds snapped and howled at them, loud, carnivorous, it felt like the soul of the air itself sought to devour and eat them. As such, it forced their hoods, capes, and robes closed about their forms, three figures then of deep red, crimson, and blue, were left marching through the continents all but forgiving paths.

What had been dirt and forest around them from their initial adventure onward, had quickly and painfully turned to mud and whipping branches. It was as if the sky had been swallowed by its own impenetrabile Grimm.

“Cinder?!” Maria howled, having been at the back of their group, she had not been prepared for the sudden gust of wind which forced her hand to her hood. When she had rallied such, she looked to that of the middle of their pack. “How much further?!”

The middle of their threesome, whose cloak of glowing deep red and gold was bombarded by rain, paused. Glancing up and forth around them, only to be found in the disappearance of flora and green, and the emergence of wet stone. “Further to what?” Cinder laughed, throwing her prosthetic out wide as she forced herself and Maria behind her to stop. “We don’t even know where this trail is taking us, do we?”

Ahead of them both, striding some small steps more than where Cinder had paused, the figure of brilliant red strode through the oncoming storm with a furious and read stride; only managing to slip on a stone once before coming to a higher position. Looking ahead of them, over the gorge ahead, Ruby saw nothing but the grey-black storm clouds of enclosing evening and the early night of the dying season.

With something amounting to conviction, Ruby turned back to the others and forced her hood open in the thrash of the wind, “We’re close, not too much further!” Before then turning back, forcing her hood to enclose around her down the trail onward.

Behind her, Cinder glanced to Maria. “Does she have any idea-?” The Fall Maiden tried, but the blue reaper was quick to move.

“Quiet down,” Maria said, making Cinder hiss as she shoved her cloaked shoulder through her own. “Maybe some more Grimm will hear your whining.” Laughing then under her breath as she carried on, Maria hurried her step to put her blue cloak just behind the red of her fellow reaper ahead.

Cinder scoffed, hissing then at a snap of thunder over head and glancing to the air. Rain continued to pour, making even the clay and stone path ahead of them now look all the more…. Concerning. Cinder tugged her hood and cloak closer to her scalp, forcing the gold clasps of her garb tight around her, she hurried to Maria’s heel.

The further scapes of Sanus were unkind, forests began to mingle with that of rock and the shimmering slick of wet gravel, and the rain never allowed them a moment of reprieve. Sludge of murky browns and grey began to highlight the three Huntresses garb as they moved, obviously to the final one of their parade’s favour, while the leading two had much else on their minds.

High stone and mountainous arches presented difficult terrain enough, but for Huntresses who were now freshly beyond battle, they seemed ridiculously improbable.

A corner of sharp grey stone and ragged rock fell underneath Ruby’s hand then, the whip of her lungs enough to bring Maria to her side and under her offhand arm then.

“Hey, hey.” The blue reaper muttered, wincing as her own exhaustion now coupled with assisting Ruby’s arm over her shoulder. “Come on, I got you.”

Though low, quiet, and barley legible over another crack of thunder, Ruby laughed. “Thanks, Mar.” She winced at her shoulder being forced more over her other bride’s shoulder. When she found herself steady, she and the other reaper looked eye to eye. “Think my ankle was actually that bad.”

“Noooo…” Maria huffed, hefting Ruby over her diminutive height, trying to smile the whole while despite her own obvious weakness. “Well, it probably isn’t that-.”

“You both look like idiots.” Cinder said, scowling as she glared at them both while marching past the pair. “Come on, I can see something ahead.” The red-gold form of the woman sliding through the rainy air like mercury over an inspection plate.

Maria winced under her breath, “You look like an idiot.”

Ruby snickered, but forced her and Maria to push on in quick pursuit of the Fall Maiden. As such, the trio were quick to be presented with a marvel, well, no, more like shambles.

The gloom and rot of the downpour’s haze presented a rocky rise beyond the distant path of thin stone and rock. Rising some meters into the apparent growing mountainous terrain, the trio looked up and onto a rounded wall and gate before them, though as they approached up the growing hazardous ascent, they found pause.

Large and made of stone brick, the roundish wall formed a large scape which faded into the misting rain. But what's more, the gate before them of iron and steel laid open, though not by much, standing to the height of the twelve foot tall wall, ushered by a shockingly decorative arch, the metal doors did not as much lay closed as barely open.

As such, while Cinder stood a step before the door, letting the rain pour over her, Ruby and Maria limped up beside her.

Heaving for breath between injury and cold, Maria glanced harshly aside to Cinder. “What? No fly around?”

Cinder glared back with a burning golden eye. “My Aura is also low, welp.” Her teeth obviously clenching, and on;y subduing themselves when Ruby forced herself between her and Maria’s gaze.

“Hey, hey!” Ruby laughed, her hands raised despite her obvious weakened stance. “Come on, it’s a town, let’s just head in, right?” Shedding Maria’s assisting hand and arm, Ruby left their trio and headed forward, “Come on, door’s open!” Before disappearing into the iron door’s opening.

Despite having to yell over the rain, Cinder and Maria felt a readied silence before their party as Ruby moved on. Eyes went upward, feeling then like the darkened sky itself was swallowed by the overhang of the town’s darkened walls. Then, when they lowered their gazes again, the path behind them felt nonexistent.

A glance to one another did little to make much more excitement to appear before both of their hands went to their robes, scrolls quickly appearing from them with urgent need.

“Anything for you?” Cinder winced, red light from her device splattered across her face.

Maria sighed. “Not a Schnee nor bar insight.” Her and Cinder both sighing then before sliding their scrolls away.

”After you, then.” Cinder hummed, using her prosthetic to wave to the door ahead. “She is your partner. One of them anyway.” While Cinder emphasised such, Maria complied, followed, but stuck out her tongue.

Cinder allowed herself only a moment then in the downpour, wincing as she felt her joints and form creak, as she looked behind them to the darkening sky. The rain sounded so much louder then, and she forced her chest warm, turned, and entered the town.

 

The Schnee manor was always cold, the marble colour and icy blues tinting the windows did little to encourage a thought aside of such, but as of late there was the notable warmth of people to its halls. The Schnee family themselves for one, not quite returning to their roost as the two sisters still had their own residences within the Kingdom of Atlas proper, but now they were seemingly more present than before and during the war.

One would think the manor would become a new bulwark for the SDC’s new upper echelon then, stuffed with the ringing and answering of scrolls, the documentation of endless bureaucratic filings, as the trio and matriarch of the family worked away. Well, there was some of that to be sure, but the obstacles which stood in the way of that holistically happening were of course the partners for the Schnees.

Ruby and Maria were the most successful, obviously, they had Weiss neatly wrapped around their fingers whenever they were in the room. The middle Schnee would move the heavens and soil just to make something of their wishes come true, and if that meant avoiding work for the time being then, again, obviously she would do such. She laughed now, she spoke proudly and with love, and she was never far without one of her partners.

Cinder was the surprising one. Winter had never considered herself someone to either need nor want a partner. But the time she spent alongside the others during the war, the change in how she saw her sister and how her sister saw herself, it changed everything. But what’s more, when Cinder Fall rebelled against the Witch, tore the parasite from her form, and laid herself at the foot of their cause she found someone not just martially her equal in swordsplay and the Maiden powers, Winter saw a kindred spirit.

Time had long since past those early days, the trio of partners and their Schnees often took to Hunts now either in their full pack or in separated groups. This month, however, had been a Hunt of the worst sort if you asked the Schnees that is. The partners had gone off on their own, and left the Schnees to their own devices within their Kingdom.

So, the manor became a common ground, for too long they had grown used to the idle noises of others milling in the background and while the office was just too far away, the Schnees now gathered in their ancestral home. The long ebony table of their dining hall was littered with pens, papers, scroll tablets and more, all while the two Schnee sisters, and their brother and mother, operated on the sides of it all.

Winter was delving into a tablet with a fierce ferocity then, scowling at every new line of information and statistics like it owed her Lien. Sparked only from her callous gaze by the gentle step and noise beside her, as Klein leaned into her preview.

“More coffee, Miss Winter?” A fine pot in hand just hovering over her now empty cup, she had drained it more times than she could count actually.

Winter sighed, let her scowl drop, and glanced about the table at the others. Whitley was drinking still, as was her Mother, she was sure Weiss would be too. Glancing then to her watch, she balked at the mid morning reflection.

Returning to Klein, Winter let her shoulders set back into her chair. “Please, Klein.” To which he bowed his head, and poured.

At that, the honourable man they had all come to practically rely on cleared his throat, and addressed the table of Atlesian elites. “Will I be preparing brunch or lunch then for you all? It is not often I would be required to feed all of the family these days.” He had that chipper colour to his eyes then, Winter hoping that as he withdrew the pot from her cup they would not be scolded by one of Klein’s other tones of voice.

Willow paused in her work, sorting papers with a few brief clips of their edges to the table. “I have another call with our Mistral office before noon, so I doubt I will be available for anything too early or…” She smiled to the man whom she had become all too much more friendly with as of late, “richly expansive of your skills, Klein.” The man’s head bowed, but the Matriarch made a slight glance and wave to the rest of her family. “But that should not excuse you all, I am sure the others would more than like you to try and actually eat something more than coffee?”

Weiss winced, her shoulders bunching slightly at the more than obvious truth her Mother pointed to. “We did have a supper last night,” she said under her breath but with enough volume for it to still be heard, “and this is too important to lose my stride with.” She then made a wave to the work before her, of which was mostly new Dust miniaturisation experiments and various in-field application tests.

“Should leave them be, Klein.” Whitley at the opposite end of the table from his Mother and the sisters scoffed. He was in the process of writing a lengthy message to one of his sales division, smirking over the brim of her scroll’s projected screen and keyboard. “If they weren’t so focussed on the company we’d need to tile new flooring from how much they would be pacing back and forth.”

Winter and Weiss snapped to their younger brother with a glare, both finding their faces pinked slightly as the noise of both Willow and Klein snickering forced some shroud of embarrassment over them.

“Indeed.” Willow hummed, setting the papers aside then before folding her hands and leaning just over her workstation. “What has it been now, twelve days?”

“Thirteen and four hours.” Winter said, swallowing at the rotor note of information within her head.

“But who’s keeping track?” Weiss whimpered in her more reserved manner, but the two sisters shared a glance then between them. One which was huffed at by Whitley, and hummed at by both Klein and Willow.

“I would have thought the two of you would have joined the trio on this Hunt.” Klein said with a measured level headedness. Moving from the table and back to the serving cart in which the coffee was returned and cream and milk was retrieved. Returning to Winter’s side with the former, and going for her cup again. “A month-long escapade into Sanus’ mountains sounds rather daunting this time of year, especially with the task of finding a Grimm hive in such a mess.”

“Oh, but Klein,” Willow laughed as she pushed herself back from the table, and rose to her feet, “The two of them had so much ‘work’ to do, how could they have possibly gotten away?” She asked with a clear comedic lull, smoothing out her skirt and vest in the process.

Winter was quick to flash her hand to the gathering of material before her. “The oncoming summit for township integration requires an actual plan to present our theory for such a task.” Scoffing slightly in exasperation as she glanced from the material and to Willow and Klein, “We could not have simply gone before the board and Huntsmen guild and said we would ‘wing it’, we would be mocked for ill will before the meeting ended.”

“And I have experiments and testing to oversee.” Weiss clicked her tongue and crossed her arms, sitting back into her seat with a huff in the process. “Things which I cannot do unless I am here in Atlas to see them first hand, how else should they be expected to turn out well?”

“All of which are things we have middle and upper management for, dears.” Willow shook her head with a low laugh, but sighed as she rounded the table with a pause. “Just say simply you did not care for the thought of attending a Hunt with your partners, I am sure they would have understood-.”

“No!” “That’s not it!” The sisters squawked in immediate sequence. Only adding fuel to another huff from Whitley and a pair of low laughs from the older pair at the head of the table now.

Still, Klein’s hand was gentle enough to fall on Winter’s stiffened shoulder, all but making her fall back into the plush seating without much effort. “They are only teasing the two of you, I am sure.” He said with a glance from Winter and onto Weiss, “But, I would still think that they would want the two of you to actually eat something and not burn up working on…” Klein glanced aside to Willow, who made a show of turning the other cheek, before leaning closer to Winter and Weiss. “… Not extremely pressing matters.”

He tapped Winter’s shoulder once more before letting it fall aside, and turning back for his serving position. All the while Willow strode out and around the table to Weiss’ side, gently touching her daughter’s upper arm as she too glanced between the pair. “And for what it is worth, I assume the three of them are handling themselves remarkably well.” Which did serve to lessen the tension unapparent in the sisters’ forms, “They are the most prestigious Huntsmen on Remnant, what is a little rough terrain and Grimm for skilled warriors such as them?”

 

“This.” Maria sighed at the deplorable dark, wet, and concrete hull of a building around them, “Sucks.” The three of them stood in a line then looking into the blackened husk of a structure, an atrium of cold stone was only made more insidious by the square cut out where a door should have been behind them; now little more than a storm of cold rain and its sheer wall concealing the outdoors.

Ruby did her best to laugh, shrugging her hood slightly and stumbling forward from their line deeper into the atrium. “It’s just to sit out the storm, come on, Mar.” She glanced behind her to her trine, smiling at the other silver eyed warrior. “It’s not gonna be that bad just for a little while, right?”

“Ruby.” Cinder hissed, removing her hood with a heavy tug and letting the soaked ashen hair of hers explode out from it. “There is more water here than in the sea, I don’t know how you expect us to just ‘make do’?”

She made a motion to Cinder then, “You can literally make fire from your hands.” Ruby said with a laugh, “And I still have some Fire Dust rounds we can take apart. Come on you guys,” she let her arms wave out with a pleading measure, “It’s just for however long that crap show lasts.” She added with a gesture to, again, the wall of rain enshrouding the door.

Of which both Maria and Cinder glanced back at, frowning more as a flash of lighting and an immediate belt of thunder rippled through the air.

“I suppose concrete is better than mud and muck.” Cinder huffed, striding up and then past Ruby; making the red reaper smile if only just.

Maria similarly was hurried along away from the door with a quick stride, coming up alongside Ruby and then taking her by the hand. “Come on, let’s just see if there’s even a chance of getting a message out to the princess.”

“You know she doesn’t like it when you call her that.” Ruby hummed, willingly allowing herself to be towed along by Maria’s eager hands as they fell in behind Cinder’s longer walk.

“Right, but where’s the lie?” Maria responded, now finally sharing a smile with her other partner, even in the up ahead grunting of Cinder.

Moving onward and into the building, the dimness of the already dark air began to entangle them to the point where Cinder had to produce her hand alight in orange-gold flame. A long corridor bled from the atrium out and into the structure, out of which produced other halls and rooms of differing sizes. Closets, offices, but more often than not, classrooms.

“This had to have been a school then, hey?” Maria asked with a quiet cold breath. Wandering along deeper in their party as they came to one such doorway and glanced within. A hole to the far wall’s ceiling allowed a sliver of silver light under the guise of a horrific column of rain. Desks were overturned, and the various splattering of textbooks made it evident that this was something of an already overturned place.

Cinder did little to contribute, simply glancing over the tarnished room before them, before scoffing and turning on down the hall, and being such the only sustainable light Ruby and Maria were forced to come in tow. Arriving at an intersection of more halls and classes and a stairwell going up and down.

Bringing them to pause before the steps, Cinder turned back to the two reapers behind her. Flicking her flame embed hand upward, the Fall Maiden huffed, “We should see if there’s anywhere on the second level that still has all of its four walls and a proper ceiling.”

“Surely the basement will have all of that and more?” Ruby offered, making a similar gesture downward and into the veritable void that was the lower floor beneath them.

Maria scoffed and glanced aside to Ruby, “Yeah, probably with all of the water going down into it and the mud?” The sarcasm was evident.

“Fine, fine.” Ruby raised her hands, ignoring how Cinder was already half way up the stairs when she lowered them and joined Maria in pursuing her. “Just thought I’d say it out loud.”

The upstairs was much the same as the ground floor, a few extended corridors which sprouted into more classes than offices and otherwise. Moving down the main thoroughfare, the trio came to what had to have been a Dust class or some science aligned room. At its core were four tables with rooted metal apparatuses, sinks, and other equipment rooted in place, while at the far wall opposite the door and hall were thickened windows of firmer metal lined glass. In large, the room was sealed, but the only warmth it had experienced in a long while was that spilled from Cinder’s burning hand.

The trio stood there in the doorway.

And stood there.

And stood there.

A sulking sigh rumbled through each of them. “This will do.” Cinder muttered, letting her head lumber forward and stepped back, allowing Ruby to trail in first.

”If there are any little Grimm bois in here, I beg you to come out now and not while I’m curled in my bag.” Ruby called out, Crescent Rose swinging from her lower back and into her hands.

As Ruby stalked around in the room, Maria leaned up on the door’s edge and glanced at Cinder. “It still shocks me that she uses a high calibre rifle to take out Grimm rats and bugs every time.”

Shrugging, Cinder simply shook her head. “It’s better than us wandering around and slashing at bugs with knives I suppose.” A loud bang did not phase either of them from the room, instead they paused for another moment.

“‘K, it’s clear!” And with that the pair shuffled off of the door and entered the room proper.

Getting to work quickly, Ruby and Maria put together an assortment of metal and debris to form a small circular perimeter, in which Ruby unscrewed one of her rounds’ caps, removed the Dust from within, and poured it over top of some hunks of pages and ruined paper on the near part of becoming mulch.

“There’s more things in the cabinets back here to burn if we need.” Maria called, returning from said cabinets to Ruby’s side and placing in what appeared to be stapled piles of worksheets on Dust and the like. “I never dreamed Hunting would lead me to burning homework.”

“Weiss would have a field day.” Ruby snickered as her and Maria crouched down and assorted the worksheets and the assortment of Dust. When they were happier than not with it, the two sat back from their small pyre and looked up to the still standing Cinder. “Have at ‘er.”

The flame from Cinder’s hand shrunk to her finger, then shot out with a small bolt to the circle. Glowing from gold and orange to blue in a quick spark of the accelerant in the Dust, before bursting into a rich and increasingly warm red-yellow flame. The wash of warmth struck the reapers with a deeply needed thrill, melting their forms downward as relief finally washed into their belated and water drenched forms.

Cinder, however, turned from the flame and pit, and made for the windows. The cold downpour did little to allow any sight of the world beyond, even with her eye so close to the glass to the point her breath fogged it. What she could barely make out was this town beyond, decrepit, cold, and blackened of purpose in the face of the mountain’s drilling wet. Mud careened across concrete roads and sidewalks, making the very thought of moving from this apparent school to any of the other buildings all the unadvisable.

She hissed under her breath, scowling, as she turned from the window with a hand to her collar. Removing the clips and pops of her cape, Cinder allowed the thing to swing ahead of her as she came back to the steepling flame and the reapers’ sides. “The downpour is not going to leave anytime soon, and we will be unable to move on from here by the looks of it until then.”

Maria, who was in the process of folding her blue cloak with little care for creases and setting it close to the flame, sulked and sighed. “So we’re making camp-camp here then, rather than just hunkering down?” She looked from Cinder to Ruby.

The red reaper sighed, nodded, and unclipped the silver bolts holding her own red cloak in place. “I guess so, a lot sooner than I would have liked for today though.” Eyes flicking from both reapers back to Cinder as the Fall Maiden joined them alongside the flame.

“It will be dark before long and the march will be all the more treacherous to begin with rather than trying to compete with mud in the black.” Cinder’s scowl extended from the two reapers and down to her form, an evident cringe across her as she placed the black cape aside and looked upon the brown-grey horror which had befallen her boots. “And I am not about to make ‘this’ any worse for the sake of a few extra pointless metres.”

“Fine, fine.” Ruby said, hands again raised in a calming gesture, though it was funny to then watch Cinder produce a small glass file from nothing and gently go about trying to remove the muck from the attire. She hummed, then moved back to Maria. “I’m just happy we finished the contract before this all hit.” Ruby made a non-specific gesture. “Could you imagine trying to tackle that sorta hive while half of the cave was drowning in on itself?”

Huffing, Maria moved a hand to her neck, “Oh, yeah, tremendous. That nightstalker would have probably started swimming at me knowing our luck.” At that Ruby laughed, a sight which did make Maria smile, before she let her hand drop back down to her front.

A quiet infested by only the sparkling of the flames and the ever gentle working of Cinder’s cleaning took hold then. The rain drowned out much of anything else in a stagnant consistent white noise as the ever present thunder and snaps of lightning filtered through the windows.

The pregnant question became too daunting then.

Ruby was the first to break, removing her gloves to reveal her water logged wrinkled hands before delving into her hip pouch and removing her scroll. “Well,” the other two took note of the movement, Maria paused her fidgeting, and Cinder stopped mid cleanse, “Moment of truth?”

She opened her scroll, swallowed, and went for its communication line.

No service.

Chapter Text

There was a nauseous sensation to how time passed, the cause was evident, clearly tying to how the Schnees’ sides were seemingly absent of things which were supposed to be there. Winter and Weiss, though they never would firmly admit to such, conducted a very similar routine when that terrible miasma of thought swept over them. Their swords would join their official and office styles, resting at their sides in their curt Huntress belts and clips, and their hands often found easy rest on those silver pommels. Similarly their offhands would sink to their hips, making them busy with the grasping of such a belt in loo of grabbing or, more properly, holding anything else.

So it was not entirely uncommon for board meetings which were already scrupulous and tense to find something worse in them, specifically because two of the most powerful people not just in the company, but the Kingdom and likely Remnant, were glaring down on whomever was currently speaking with weapons millimetres away.

And they were very conscious of that fact.

Another meeting ended the same way the first few had that day, scrambled notes, loud final summaries said with quickened tones, and thanks to those in attendance. It was in short order such things were done, quickly leaving Weiss alone at the head of a table with the farcical smoke outlines of those who had just been a part of the meeting, their proper forms all but sprinting for the door.

At the least it left her a moment to ease herself back into her chair, and to gaze upon the all too brief notes she had taken from the meeting.

‘Irrigation system needs overhaul,’ ‘farmer introduction guide requires fine tuning’, and more of the same vaguities which had been talked about in full before, and had she the proper mental space she would have recorded their issues in full. But no, no her mind was not in this room, she realised as her fingers once more drawled over the silver edge of Mytrenaster. If anything, she was not even in Solitas right now, her head was somewhere in the gods forsaken arm pit of Sanus.

Knuckles on wood snapped Weiss from her glaring focus on those miserable penned words and to the side, initially going for the door to the conference room before snapping far closer and to the table side; a spot which her sister currently stood in.

“Do you have time for a chat?” Winter asked, and Weiss wondered for a half moment if she even processed Winter entering the room, had she knocked on the door?

But regardless, Weiss was quick to pause her thoughts, nod, and gather her materials.

Winter’s office, while Weiss would never admit to such anyway, did have a better view of the city than her own. Facing downtown and Mantel past it proper, the afternoon skyline shone with that clear brightness of a cold season day following duplicitous constant snowfall.

And her chairs and desk were nicer, something she did however mention constantly.

“I need to talk to Mother again about this.” Weiss muttered, sitting into the dark leather chair before her sister’s desk, paper cup of coffee in hand. “Frankly it is still ridiculous that I still have that standard arrangement.”

Taking her seat across the desk, Winter smiled with a soft shrug. “Blame Cinder,” she chuckled, swilling the cup in her hand with a slow motion. “She was the one who got these up here, she was too tired of the discomfort in those standard ones whenever she waltzed in here to complain about my time spent here.”

However, the smile upon her sister’s face seemed to lessen at that, growing colder like the winds beyond her office window, and it was easy for Weiss to see why. Hells, she felt why, as that odd melancholy wave from Winter seemed to double her own.

“Indeed.” Weiss hummed, bringing the cup to her lips quickly, swallowing, then dropping it back to her lap where both of her hands kindly folded over it. A movement which Winter mirrored as well, drinking before setting the cup back into her hands.

“Then,” Weiss shifted herself on the edge of the chair, moving forward enough so that she was attentive, even if the slouch in her shoulders now was more leaning to that of an awkward teen. “Then do you want to talk about their, uh, absence?”

Winter’s brow tensed, the cup returning to her lips as did Weiss’, but when she set it down the older Schnee paused. “I am simply concerned.” Winter said, slowly if by any measure, before she pushed herself and her chair closer to the desk. “And I am aware that I have no reason to be.”

“We are far from the first time they have been so far away, Winter.” Weiss was unsure if she was reasoning such to herself or her sister. “And they are far from unprepared, as we both know.” She made something of a scoffing noise though the odd underpinning of her breath made it sound more like a dejected huff disguised in a wary smile. “And it isn’t like they haven’t attended Hunts on other continents, or for periods of time which are rather unpleasant for us.”

“Logic dictates that this is like any other time then, I know.” Winter responded, nodding, but still flicked her fingers over her coffee cup with an unwary fidgeting. “I am just…” Weiss watched her sister glance aside, “Feeling the distance this time, I believe.” She shook her head, leaning back into her chair and turning just to look off and out of the window, looking westward with a drifting sigh. “By now some form of message should have come through, right?”

Yes, usually by now the three of them were able to at least find some form of manner to send word back. But what was Weiss going to do? Admit she was concerned deeply as well? Make it so the two of them were fretting and panicking over something so minuscule that it would hardly matter when the three of them undoubtedly sent word or returned home?

“I think they still have some time, certainly.” Weiss shrugged, forcing herself to shift in her seat, and lean backward. Coffee once more stirring in her hands as Winter glanced back at her, a brow raised in the process. “Ruby usually rushes them along to find somewhere, Maria condones it, Cinder dawdles about being rushed. It happens every time,” she added with a small flourish of her hand aside, “Perhaps this time Maria and Cinder have gotten the better of Ruby and forced her to slow down for once?”

Winter’s gaze on Weiss sharpened, like it had done so many times before when they trained or sparred. For a half-second, Weiss was concerned that whatever forced assurances she was summoning were falling aside, that whatever kindred words she was trying to use were going to fall completely flat upon her.

While Winter’s sharper look did not dull or lessen, she did turn it aside and downward to the office floor. The cup rising to her lips and pausing there for a beat, “I am unsure if Cinder would be able to convince Miss Rose of such, but assuredly Calavera would see them napping before returning at any sensible time.”

Drinking from her own cup in measure, Weiss swallowed down whatever reprisal she would have planned to give her sister for such an accusation, though she did rather hope that whatever was going on for their party was influenced alone by Maria’s dramatics.

 

Ruby sighed before slapping the palm of her hand against a pentagonal squat machine. “Come on you freaking thing.” The thing made a low and disconcerting warble, like a chain attempting to catch on its train, before sputtering into quiet again. As such, Ruby forced a taut and disgruntled sigh.

“Still waterlogged, huh?” Maria called out, now having put herself by the window of the classroom they occupied. The darkness of the sky and world beyond behind her did little to assist in either of them telling the day from night now, as the storm had yet to abate or even make a show of lessening.

Another whack to the machine brought Ruby back to her crouch, glaring down on it and its place in the back right corner of the room. “I think it’s just too cold for the inner bits of it to catch up to speed.” She confessed with a small jerk to its assembly, lifting it up and looking it over. “I like how Weiss was so happy she had finally gotten a proper scroll signal booster to a smaller size so we could carry it and then failed to mention that if it’s colder than fifteen degrees the thing just dies.”

Maria nodded with a huff, pushing off of the window sill with a final glance to it before stepping out and towards the corner. “Tall dark and broody hasn’t come back yet either.”

“Dunno how you’d be able to tell if she did.” Ruby picked up the machine again with a laugh, rolling over her crouch to sit flatly in the corner of the room with her back against the wall. “She’s going to just blend into everything out there if she doesn’t have some fire with her.”

“Which’d go out right away.” Maria pointed out, but shook her head. “Weird that she got up and moving so quickly though, I thought she was complaining about her Aura earlier?”

At that, Ruby shrugged as she rolled the machine over in her hand, popping open a back panel with ease before looking over its interior. “Yeah, but it’s Cinder, she’s hard to second guess sometimes.” The light of the fire they had begun when things were at least visible was still doing its best to help the Huntress with her mechanical surgery, looking over the insides of the machine with an odd lip crook before Maria came to her side.

“No luck with it then?” Maria tried, waving to the booster.

“I don’t get how it works in Atlas snow and cold just fine but as soon as it gets cold and wet this just stops working.” Ruby sighed, picking at something inside of the mechanism with her fingers for a moment before wincing, and closing it again. “Well, we can let it warm up and dry I guess.”

Maria scoffed, glancing back to their cloaks and hoods by the fire which, now without Cinder’s, looked still awfully damp and cold. “I’d welcome you to try.” To which she lowered her hand to Ruby, who grasped it with her offhand, and got her other trine mate to her feet.

“Well it is either wait for it to dry, or take it apart, and I don’t have any of the proper tools for that here.” Ruby wheezed as she got to her feet, and stuck closer to Maria’s side as she moved forward, “Or wait until Cinder gets back and let her light a match within it-.” She stifled with an unexpected lurch to her boots.

“Woah.” Maria shifted quickly, whirling a hand around to catch Ruby by the stomach as well as her arm. Eyes going down quickly before reprising a look of concern flatly onto her partner’s face, which now twisted into something more odd and sour. “Hey, what was that?”

“Nothing.” Ruby hissed through gritted teeth, but as she tried to move again, shifting more weight to her other boot a spring of pain surged through her. “A-ah. Nevermind.” The machine in her hand slipped as it unexpectedly flinched her hand open, landing with a wet thump then on top of her and Maria’s wet cloaks.

Though neither of the reapers took much time to pause and care on that point, Maria quickly flinched Ruby from the ground and into her arms before depositing the red reaper’s itching form on top of one of the school room desks. Placing the red reaper down with a slow ease, but one which nevertheless encouraged Maria’s concern, Ruby barely had time to blink before Maria was crouching in front of her with her ankles in her hands.

“Which one, it’s the left, right?” Ruby nodded to Maria, who already had the boot’s straps in hand and was removing it.

“I just twisted it, it’s not that bad.” She tried, she really did try, but the release of pressure her boot’s bounding offered her was quickly relieved and Ruby was allowed to feel the full thrill of an obliterated joint. ”O-okay, maybe it’s that bad-.”

“Quiet.” Maria huffed, putting the boot aside and removing the wet sock and legging from the problem area. Ruby’s ankle was practically purple, the swelling was not too bad but that was not totally unexpected for now; give it a minute though, Maria thought. Just touching the purpling area brought huffs from the reaper before her, and Maria did not like the feeling of those muscles or the ankle at all.

“Let me get an actual look at this thing, it's been too long of you sitting on it.” Exasperation mixed with barely disguised frustration was one of Ruby’s favourite tones of Maria’s voice, it was just a shame it so often fell onto her. “Remind me what happened again?”

Ruby whined at the pulsing pressure from Maria’s fingers, but did little to dissuade it. “Tried to catch a nevermore bite with Crescent Rose at a stupid angle.” She sighed, leaning back on the desk to lean through her arms behind her. “Weiss would have berated me to no end if you wanna picture it?”

“I’d rather berate you for this.” Maria hissed, but looked from the ankle up and to her other partner. “I think you managed to sprain it, doesn’t feel broken at all.” She added with a seemingly needless further press into the bruising part of the joint, forcing Ruby to release a squirming huff; but Maria simply sat back with it in her hands and sighed.

“Course the one time we could actually use the flaming ass and she’s not even here.” Maria scowled.

Ruby paled, sitting up and growling through clenched teeth. “You would not let Cinder put her hands around my ankle, what are you thinking?”

“You’re the one who's always raving about how close you two are now.” Maria said, looking back at Ruby with a smirk and deadpan stare, “Plus it's the closest thing we have to anything like hot or cold pads out here right now, don’t you wanna walk again?”

“I’d rather die.” Ruby hissed, and gasped as Maria squeezed into the bruise again.

 

Once more garbed in her black hood and cape, Cinder was doing her best to move down the main thoroughfare of the town’s central road. The rain was coming down harder now, with lightning and thunder still obnoxiously close overhead. But for Cinder, she could stomach the gold just as long as she kept her internal heat high enough with the Maiden powers while her Aura sapped itself back to strength.

Someone needed to go figure out where they were anyhow, and she wasn’t about to let the runt or skull face take the credit for it. So she stalked forward through the rain, came to another street corner, and glanced up, down, and across it.

“How in the hells does a mountain town have so many four way intersections?” Cinder murmured, hissing as she felt the Maiden powers expend themselves again to keep her warm, a flurry of steam rising up and out of the hood of her form. Grunting, she made her way across the street again with a loud click to her boots on the otherwise flooded road.

The buildings around them seemed to mimic that of the design of the school. Harsh concrete, some small decorations in the corners, arches, and windows, but very much everything looked built to last even these storms. She imagined the supports and needed weight of every part of this place needed to be rather large considering just this storm.

Of course Winter would have a field day with this place, the math of it all, Cinder smirked at the thought of her partner glowing as she explained the weather resistant riveting and the continued heat preservations. But that in of itself brought Cinder to one of the other more common attributes of these buildings around her.

Most of them were damaged, covered with holes which chopped down any hope of a more stable building to reside in. Windows were smashed, doors caved in, and ceilings poured in gallons of water onto the floors like indoor waterfalls.

Cinder did not think much of it. She had seen Mountain Glen, she knew there were things in the world which could do something like this, hells, she was one of those things. The problem she truly had was that this was going to keep being an issue for them moving through this place as long as the storm was around. Because as much as the two of them did not want to admit it, there was an increasing likelihood that this storm would last for longer than just a couple of days.

It had already taken the bulk of an evening where none of them had slept, just sat around, eating rations, making do with the fire they could still make, before she had rescind herself to being the scout.

But there was little point in thinking about that now, instead she had a proper objective and she would make certain that she would see it through-.

A low, rumbling, growl forced the Fall Maiden to twirl to an alley beside her, flame blazing from her hand and producing one of her swords. Blackness enveloped her vision, the rain dominating much of the rest, what Cinder could barely make out was an overflowing garbage bin, debris, and little more before the utter blackness alley swallowed the rest whole.

Standing there in the downpour, she paused, holding herself firm. She knew she had heard a growl, low, rumbling, she had to have, it was practically in her ear; like someone had played it on a headset for her alone. The blade levelled in her hand, coming forward and across her body as she balanced it into a two handed stance. It was right there, she knew it was.

A flash of lightning froze the image in her mind, the alley revealed, with nothing but rock, garbage, and wet air within it. When the thunder rippled through the air like a loud drummer’s song, Cinder revealed her teeth in a snarling glare. Her first step was backward, slow, and deliberate, as the second and third took her backward and she began her slow return to the school; never letting the dark go without her glare for a second more at a time.