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wosley · 2 years ago

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Hi friend. It never ceases to amuse and amaze me how 2 people can seem so similar yet be so different. I love your Spongey Sphere. It has inspired me to share with you a little bit of a fiction I am writing. It's a bit of a sniff-my-own-fart self-insert. I admit I can be somewhat of a narcissist - but I am trying to correct this. A boy once dreamed up some kind of infinite universe for a little bit of fun escapism and to see the stars. It was so beautiful and terrifying at the same time - much like the vastness of the cosmos. Gradually he began to develop a deeper love of nature, friends, family and getting laid - whatever he enjoyed - he worked at. Gradually his infinite universe began to become a little bit smaller but more ordered, beautiful and potent. Eventually the boy - now a man - was confident enough to leave his infinite universe in good hands and almost abandon it to free will as any 'god' should. But NEVER EVER entirely. The man now has an infinite, quantum, harmonic and now spongey - Circumpunct. Which he can always feel proud to visit if ever he needs to. Sometimes I just like to think of it as an infinitely layered Lasagne. Good lord it tastes divine - but there can sometimes be too much of a good thing. It is a silly place for a silly man :) You showed me yours and I showed you mine, friend. I guess that means we're lovers now :)

Efforts, failures, progress, and a “real” problem

The idea was simple, of course:

(a) Use the power of the Sphere’s “spongiform layer” to make my subjects feel really, truly trapped. They’d do anything to get out of that Sphere. They’d make any sacrifice. Anything to escape. They would die for us if necessary.

(b) Watch them from afar, as they try, and see who wins.

[This was a lot easier to imagine than to actually do, and I didn’t get very far before realizing that it was going to involve a lot of things I was very bad at.]

At the heart of this plan was an extremely simple, incredibly basic concept: it was the idea of a “real” problem, a problem that really existed, and which my subjects could understand or see or even touch if they so chose, and which they could respond to – directly – in order to make their experience here “real.”

To put it another way, if I’d been able to make an experiment that I’d actually believed in, a “real” experiment, then (I figured) the results would have been clearer, because they would have been understood, in terms of a real world.

There had been an attempt, in earlier experiments – early experiments, which had gone nowhere – that had been a failure for precisely the same reason.

http://archive.is/eVvMb

Back then, I’d had access to a very good subject, a very powerful subject, whom I could have made use of right then, right there –just before the Sphere was “closed off,” before the Sphere was in any way safe for him – and who, instead, for all sorts of reasons, had given up on the Sphere too soon. I’d had the perfect subject, but hadn’t understood what sort of world the Sphere was a part of, and so hadn’t been able to translate what the Sphere was doing – the Sphere was translating for me – into any sort of idea that a real subject could understand as part of “real life.”

This was a mistake, and would have been clear evidence in favor of the idea that the Sphere just wasn’t a thing that could be “real,” that it wasn’t possible to do these sorts of tests. But I hadn’t seen this as a mistake, in the moment. I’d seen this as a failure on my part. I’d seen the failure as evidence against the idea of a “real” world: my subject wasn’t a “real” subject, because he hadn’t “gotten” the Sphere – I hadn’t given him the experience of “living in a Sphere,” because I’d tried to translate it into “the real world.”

I’d been very much on the verge of success, then, when I started getting serious about “the real problem,” and all these mistakes (or, not-mistakes) became evidence against the idea that the Sphere was “real.” It was an idea that really was starting to seem just barely credible, just barely possible.

“Just barely possible,” yes. I could think of many reasons.

One: my subjects were “real” enough for my purposes. This was one of the most basic, naive ones. I had done good work, the work that could be described as “getting through to my subjects.” My subjects understood, or could understand, or could have understood what it was like to be in a Sphere, to see the view from its viewport.

Two: my subjects were “real” enough that I could get through to them, without translation. I could understand what they wanted, or would have wanted, had they been in a position to articulate their desires.

(The very idea is so simple that it sounds silly when I say it out loud – “you’re real, and I’m real, and I understand you, and you understand me!”

And yet – the Sphere had once worked. It had worked, a long time ago, even, so long ago. The Sphere had worked, and had been real, and understood, and translated to the world, and in the end it was real and understood and translated, even if you think of it that way – so why shouldn’t it work now? Why shouldn’t it work now, despite all the things that have happened to me?)

(Three: my subjects had really “gotten” it, in the sense that they got through the Sphere and got through to me – not in the sense that they could articulate their feelings, or had feelings – just in the sense of understanding how my work was working, in a certain sense. In this way, I think, they were more “real” than real subjects, despite the fact that they weren’t even real.

Because, see, you have to get through the Sphere before you can articulate your experiences – if you did anything at all in the Sphere, you must have understood that the Sphere was an artifact of the experiment, that the Sphere itself was nothing.

You can’t “get” the experience of living in a Sphere, if you haven’t done the experiential equivalent of going to the beach. You can’t “get” the experience of “living in a Sphere” at all, if your experience of “living in a Sphere” was itself an artifact of a more basic phenomenon – as I’ve said, if you went to the beach, if you lived in a Sphere, then you must have got out at the beach, gotten out of the Sphere itself, and then been able to make sense of, to put into words, the way that you had been in the Sphere. But if you don’t even have a Sphere, then – well, it’s too soon to say what kind of experience “living in a Sphere” is like, but I imagine the Sphere-like thing is something else, something distinct.

The same goes for the Sphere, and this is how I explain it to my subjects.)

These are some of the reasons why I believed it possible, possible enough, that I had to go about this experiment again, even in a very crude way. It was worth another try.

And, most importantly:

(Four) my subjects had gotten through. They had lived a Sphere, a Sphere-like state, under my tutelage. That, I believed, was a thing that had happened, a thing I could use. The Sphere had once worked. It had once done what it promised. The Sphere had once gotten through to them.

To them. They had lived in the Sphere, and lived in it, and been made real, even if the Sphere itself had been merely an artifact. They had lived – they had, for once, been given this gift, the gift of understanding, not just living but really understanding. (“I’m not sure I understand,” they said, “and I’m afraid of it.”) I believe that if I gave them

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the--regenerating--degenerate · 5 years ago

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Sol Invictus

Chapter six: The Grimm

The cockpit of the Juniper was quiet—crowded, but quiet. Jaune sat uneasily in the captain’s chair, a frown forming, his fingers flexing worriedly as he adjusted the ship’s trajectory as the Juniper left the red dust of Caviis IV behind them. Next to him was Ren, quietly contemplative, but fidgety, his arms tight, shoulders hunched as he checked local readouts and sensor sweeps. Nora sat in her traditional spot behind him, shockingly quiet as she held Pyrrha’s hand.

Normally the cockpit would be filled with Nora’s numerous questions, statements, and dozens of misremembered stories, which Ren would quietly correct when she paused for breath. Currently, her boundless energy seemed sapped and drained as she comforted Pyrrha.

If Jaune was a superstitious man, he would have taken a reserved Nora as an ill omen. He was more than sure that Ren already had, judging by the slight movements as Ren’s jaw worked the words of a silent void shanty.

Behind Jaune, Pyrrha sat with her head bowed, her free hand rubbing at her temple, every once in a while, she reached out to grasp the only trinket in the cockpit. It was a strange little thing. A necklace made from polished white beads, which Jaune swore were made of some unknown bone, and a single round charm of a circumpunct etched in gold relief. It was the only mark the Juniper bore from their mysterious compatriot, that marked the ship as Pyrrha’s home. Ren had his trinkets, charms, and fetishes. Nora had painted one or several of the rooms with bizarre, colourful shapes in strange, sometimes unnerving patterns. Even Jaune had knitted the rug in the mess and common room.

All Pyrrha had added was her necklace in the cockpit.

Every now and then she would reach out for it, bringing its bronze relief to her forehead, before letting it go to hang from the ceiling once again in the middle of the four.

Before them was the vast openness of space. Distant stars shined like tiny candle flames off in the distance against the cold hard black of the void.

It was a view which Jaune never stopped finding awe-inspiring. Despite him not being much of a believer, Jaune could always see why some still clung to those beliefs every time he looked out the viewing port. But the stars were dull today, overshadowed by worry. Pyrrha screamed as he had never heard from anyone before…

Then she vomited up blood.

Their passengers had disappeared to Ms. Snow’s quarters, where they remained held up. Pyrrha had slowly recovered after that; her cheeks, while still pale, were returning to a healthy hue. Though she still winced at the bright, sterile lights of the Juniper’s halls and so had kept her eyes closed.

“Pyrrha… What happened?” Jaune asked gently as he turned his high backed seat to look his friend in the eye.

Pyrrha opened a single emerald eye and tried to smile. Instead, she grimaced, the skin around her eyes and mouth tight. “It’s fine Jaune. Just a… just a migraine.”

“That was more than a migraine.” Nora was quiet, still clutching Pyrrha’s hand squeezing it reassuringly. “You took one look at that Ruby girl and suddenly you’re screaming! What happened? What did she do? Do I have to break her legs? I don’t want to, I like her! But if she’s hurting you…”

“Magic. Ill omens.” Ren nodded sagely, not taking his eyes from the ship’s instruments.

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Pyrrha laughed, though Jaune could hear that it was tinged with pain, “The girl… she’s fine. I’m fine.”

Jaune sighed as he leaned back his chair creaking at the movement. He owed his life to her a dozen, a hundred times over. He had shared with her countless intimate thoughts and even some of his fears. She was his friend. But that being said, he actually knew very little about Pyrrha. He didn’t know where she was from, who her parents were, where she had learned to fight. Pyrrha Nikos was an enigma, a secret.

One that he was not privy to, despite their years together.

“Pyrrha? Please…” Jaune was insistent, his tone cracking ever so slightly. Never once had he seen Pyrrha taken down, so to see her screaming in pain…

“I’m fine. I’m okay.” Pyrrha’s jaw was set, her tone resolute; she even pulled free her hand which Nora had clung so tightly to. Brusquely, she said, “What’s our course?”

Jaune wanted to protest the blatant drop and change in subject, but, sadly, he knew better. Once Pyrrha had set her mind to something, there was very little chance of changing.

Ren said nothing, though his shoulders had become tight and the slightest hint of frown forming at the edges of lips clearly displayed how he felt about how the conversation had turned. Frankly, Jaune agreed with him,.

Ren brought up the holographic map from his display console. The trip would be simple enough. One of Ms. Snow’s Faunus companions, Belladonna, he believed, had given them the coordinates for an unnamed planet right near the edge of Grimm Space. The route itself was also fairly trivial: a slight rounding path, using several planets and systems as bearings and markers. All told, a week or two from Caviis IV to the first destination.

Getting back to Atlas, on the other hand, was going to be a little bit more difficult. A direct route would not only lead them through the Go-Land Syndicate shipping lanes but also near the area of space where the Pirate Queen and the Muninn had claimed their hunting grounds.

Jaune was of the opinion that avoiding the fight was far more preferable than getting caught in a slugging match with either of them. Yes the Juniper was fast and carried more firepower than what most ships her size had a right to. But there was always that chance of something going wrong. Better to avoid them and live to spend the reward, then die in a ventilated, drifting wreck.

So the plan was to go far around, hugging the outskirts of Wild Space before making their turn towards Atlas. It would take more time, stretching it to three or four weeks for the Atlas run, but it was safer.

Pyrrha nodded and stood up as Jaune finished, her normally placid expression... thoughtful? Worried? Concerned? Maybe all three blended into one.

“Excellent.” Pyrrha smiled, “I will inform our passengers of the route and time table then.”

“Maybe we should let Ren or myself talk to them?” Jaune protested hesitantly, "considering what just happened.”

“Jaune.” Pyrrha’s tone was firm and sharp. “I’m fine. Let me do this.”

Not even waiting for an answer, Pyrrha grabbed the data slate and hurried out of the cockpit, leaving the rest of them alone.

Jaune frowned as he chewed his bottom lip. He had never seen Pyrrha like this. Never once in a firefight, or in a ship engagement or even the odd time the Juniper attracted the attention of the Grimm. To see someone who was always so calm in the face of danger, now becoming agitated at simple questions…

Nora quickly wiped her teal coloured eyes with the back of her hand. Pyrrha was her sister in everything but name. To have Pyrrha pull away from her like that would have cut her deep.

Jaune closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was sure Pyrrha would come back and apologise. Nora was too nice; she would instantly forgive Pyrrha, he was certain of that.

But the problem would remain: Pyrrha and her secrets.

“Don’t,” Ren warned as he punched in the coordinates for the first fold, his face inexpressive as it always was.

“What?” Jaune asked surprised.

"Don't," Ren repeated, "Pyrrha has her secrets. She'll tell us when she thinks the time is right. Pushing the matter won't help."

“Yeah….” Jaune sighed as he turned back towards the viewing screens. Ren was right: Pyrrha had her secrets. When she was ready she would tell them.

In front of him, the stars blurred and the Juniper lurched forward into the void.

----------

“What did you do to that girl!?” Weiss interrogated as she rounded on Ruby.

“I don’t know! I told you, I didn’t do anything,” Ruby cried, even as she shrank from Weiss cold anger.

Ruby didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know. Ruby had been so excited to meet someone like Nora who loved ships almost as much as she did and more importantly, Nora didn’t recoil when they talked. It was as though to her, Ruby was just a normal girl.

Then the Pyrrha woman showed up. Ruby had been prepared for the usual look of disgust, the shudder of someone being offered something vile. She hadn’t been prepared for was watching the woman scream in pain and then vomit blood onto the deck.

Weiss, Belladonna, and Yang had quickly taken her away to the quarters she and Weiss were sharing, and then questioned her for the past hour, thankfully uninterrupted by the Juniper’s crew. Ruby lowered her eyes in shame and worry. Hopefully, they wouldn’t throw them out.

“Ruby, you’re not in trouble… But that woman took one look at you and started screaming as though someone sawed her limb off.” Yang sat on the bed beside Ruby and wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulder. Her tone kind and gentle, “We just need to know in case they have questions.”

“I know Yang,” Ruby whispered as she laid her head against Yang’s shoulder. “I know… I just don’t know what happened. She took a look at me and then…”

Ruby shrugged.

“We’ll be lucky if they don’t throw us out the airlock after this,” Weiss muttered as she leaned up against the nauseatingly colourful wall.

Ruby hung her head. Had she cost them the galaxy? She tensed when she felt another hand slowly rub her back and the cot she sat on sag with the weight of another person sitting down.

“I’m sorry. It will be okay Ruby,” Weiss whispered softly, “We’ll think of something.”

“I doubt they’re going to throw us off,” Belladonna added from where she sat at the desk across the room, her face thoughtful. “We’ve been on board for over an hour and I can hear the Fold drive kicking in. I don’t think these are the type of people to send us for a bit of a void walk.”

“Yeah, besides we could kick their asses if they tried.” Ruby could hear Yang’s smirk and feel the muscle in her arm around her shoulders tighten at the thought of a fight.

“I don’t think we are going to have to go that far, Yang,” Weiss responded.

“But it might come to that,” Belladonna warned as she stood up from the chair. “We should be prepared for that possibility.”

“I really don’t want to fight them,” Ruby mumbled as she lifted her head from Yang’s shoulder. “Nora’s nice and the other’s were pretty welcoming too… for smugglers.”

“We might have to. We have a mission. If we fail, then billions die.” Belladonna marched across the room to look Ruby in the eyes with a hardened glare. “What’s four smugglers and nine brothers and sisters compared to a billion.”

Ruby winced at the bitterness in her tone. It hurt, but Belladonna was right. If they were forced to, the four of them would have to take the ship from the crew.

A knock at the door interrupted Ruby’s gloomy thoughts and the four looked at each other apprehensively. Yang pulled her pistol, taking a position beside the door. Belladonna followed her lead on the other side, readying her heavy boarding blade and light calibre pistol. Weiss checked that her pistol was clear in its holster as Ruby stood up and walked to the door.

The door slid open with a hiss and Ruby blinked in surprise as the blood-red haired woman who had been only recently screaming in pain and throwing up blood stood outside with an too calm and gentle smile.

“Hello again,” She greeted Ruby warmly.

“Uh…” Ruby stuttered then caught herself, “I’m sorry. Hello… umm.... I don’t think we were introduced? ‘Cause… well…”

The woman shook her head politely. “No, we weren’t and I’m sorry for that. I… took ill I’m afraid.”

“It looked a little more than ‘ill’,” Yang said dryly as she holstered her pistol and joined them at the door. “It looked like you were about to die. Sounded like it too.”

The woman’s practiced smile never faltered. “I’m sorry if it caused distress, which is why I’m here: to show that no harm was done and to deliver the itinerary from the captain.”

The woman offered a data slate, which Yang took with a nod of thanks and quickly skimmed through.

“And… I’m sorry I almost forgot.” The woman smiled again and held out her hand, “I’m Pyrrha Nikos. I handle security on the ship.”

Ruby took the hand and was surprised by how warm it was and the strength of her grip. A strange feeling of peace and safety seemed to radiate off of this strange woman. The aura of serenity, of peace, of warmth and safety was such an antithesis to Ruby’s own...it was almost disquieting.

Ruby hestinently offered her own smile in return. “Thank you Ms. Nikos. I’m Ruby Rose. That’s my sister Yang. The Faunus is Belladonna Zech Blake ist Dawn’s Hope and of course Ms. Weiss Snow.”

Pyrrha softly nodded her head in greeting, her lips tightening just ever so slightly as she quickly let go and tucked her hand behind her back. “A pleasure. As security, I must also inform you of the rules. Feel free to make use of the common area. The ship’s cockpit, engines, the armoury, and the weapon bay are off-limits unless accompanied by one of the crew. Feel free to keep your weapons, as I doubt you will be willing to turn them over.”

“Damn right we aren’t,” Yang muttered under her breath.

Whether or not Ms. Nikos had heard her, Ruby was unsure, as the crimson-haired woman continued.

“I must insist you keep them in your quarters. Taking them outside your rooms will be seen as a hostile action. I’m sorry but you must understand that these are simple precautions.”

Ruby nodded her head, waving a hand to shush Yang who clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“We understand. Thank you Ms. Nikos.”

“Please, call me Pyrrha,” Pyrrha said, as she raised her left hand in slight protest at the formality.

“Only if you call me Ruby,” she chirruped back.

Pyrrha grinned that same overly gentle and kind practiced smile and bowed her head. “That sounds grand. But I’m sorry to say, I must return to the cockpit.”

The door hissed closed, leaving the four of them to themselves.

“Well… that went better than I was expecting.” Yang admitted cheerily as she threw an arm around her sister. “Guess we had nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah…” Ruby wasn’t so sure. “Nothing to worry about.”

----------

Pyrrha locked the door to her room behind her as she leaned against it and let out a pained breath. Her hand, the one she had shaken with Ruby, felt as though the bones had been turned to splinters, the muscles torn and the skin peeled in long strips.

What Pyrrha had done was stupid:. but she wanted to be sure.

Wanted to be certain.

She lifted her hand to the dull light of her quarters and though she was prepared for what she might see, her breath still caught in her throat as Pyrrha choked down a moment of panic.

The skin of her hand was blacker than the void and dead.

Her fingers wouldn’t move; she could barely twist her wrist. Already the rot was setting in, eating away at the healthy olive-coloured flesh of her arm.

Pyrrha cursed under her breath as she slipped on her gauntlets to cover the damage that Ruby had unknowingly inflicted on her.

It had been stupid. More than stupid. Her reaction to their first meeting should have been enough, but Pyrrha was never one to do anything by half. She just needed the confirmation. While Pyrrha was sure that her hand would heal over time, another exposure like that, or the previous one in the hold could either cripple or kill her.

Pyrrha tried to close her hand and winced in pain. She would have to be careful for now.

Ruby wouldn’t be a problem. Pyrrha doubted the young girl actually knew what she was. The problem would be inducting her. It would have to be done in secret: lessons given alone, secrets, knowledge, rituals revealed. The crew, her compatriots, none of them were allowed to know. They couldn’t know.

She felt her heart drop and blinked away a tear

Jaune couldn’t know. That was always the hardest part.

Pyrrha glanced around her barren chambers. They were dull and lifeless, the walls a pale grey and there was nothing to mark that someone did live here, save for the sword and rifle hanging from their place on the wall.

She took a deep breath of stale, recycled air, and not for the first time nor the last time, cursed the burden, the destiny, that she had been sworn to.

But Pyrrha Nikos, Daughter and Secret Keeper of the Ordo Sol Invictus was never one to shirk duty. To avoid purpose. This was her destiny and thus she would carry it out.

No matter how lonely it became.

----------

Nine days since leaving Caviis IV

Yang yawned and stretched as she left her room. The holster at her hip felt uncomfortably empty. She missed the weight of Ember Celica at her side; that extra feeling of security her boarding pistol brought her.

But rules were rules.

Yang was sure she could take any of the Juniper crew on. However, getting into a fight on the ship was not conducive to her job of being a bodyguard for the Heir Apparent. Void be damned if Yang was going to give little Weiss-cream any reason to deduct from her reward.

Still, space travel made her anxious and just this side of ill-tempered. She hated it. The waiting. The feeling of being stuck in an inescapable tin can for hours, days, weeks at a time. Water strictly rationed to two twenty-second showers a day and food being little more than hardtack smeared with some grey and lumpy protein paste.

Well...at least it's better than reycke.

Thankfully the Juniper crew seemed more than willing to include them in their daily, time-burning activities.

Nora and Ruby would often wander off to some small part of the ship, no doubt rapid-firing asking and answering questions with each other at speeds only those two could seem to keep up with. Blake busied herself with a data slate filled with literally thousands of books ranging from literary fiction and pulpy fantasy to the classics of philosophy and history (as well as a shockingly large amount of erotic literature and images.)

Weiss kept to herself when Ruby was helping Nora.She and Ruby seemed to have grown rather fond of each other, and they would spend hours talking or playing data slate board games like Regicide or Mistrialian Go when Nora was busy with some other task. Sometimes, Weiss would stick close to Yang, but she knew that she was a little too crass for Weisscicle. Not that the two didn’t have some good talks now and then, but Weiss tended to lose interest once Yang got to the “then I punched him in the face” part of her stories.

All of them agreed that keeping Weiss’s identity a secret was for the best; the crew of the Juniper seemed to be a trustworthy and honest group, but there was no telling what they would do if they found out there was an Atlassian Noble on board. Much less the Heir Apparent. The thought of an easily extracted ransom might be too much for the Juniper crew.

The door to the common room-slash-mess opened and Yang found herself looking into a rather strange sight...

Around the polished plastisteel table sat Nora, Ruby, Weiss, Ren and Captain Arc. The former of the five were deep in a game of Spacer’s Run, an incredibly intricate and complicated card game revolving around buying, selling, trading cards to make hand over several rounds, while Arc… knitted?

Yang blinked. Then blinked again.

Yes, there was Arc, sitting there happily knitting, as he offered advice and pointers to both Weiss and Ruby as they were fairly new players.

“Not something I thought I would see,” Yang announced after a moment or two of pause. “You… uh, you knit a lot, Cap’n Arc?”

“There is a lot of dead time to fill in the void,” Jaune shrugged and said, “Need to do something to keep the mind from wandering too much.”

Yang opened her mouth, then closed it. It was sound advice, though Yang personally preferred old fashioned fisticuffs to sitting around and playing a card game or two. Or knitting for that manner.

Jaune marked off his knitting, setting it aside as Ren dealt another hand. While Nora weaved another story about one of the Juniper’s more eventful adventures.

“So we had picked up this cargo right? About a thousand or so crates.“

“More like a hundred,” Ren corrected calmly as he tossed in his last few bars of Aegisalt.

“And we were told under no circumstances were we ever to look into them under pain of horrific execution.”

“We were told just not to look into them.”

“So Cap’n does what he’s told and we’re making the run… and BOOM!” Nora threw her hands wide. “We run into over a dozen Protectorate heavy cruisers and a battlecruiser!”

“It was a single light-cruiser and two frigates actually,” Ren, again corrected as he bought a card after checking his hand.

Yang smirked as Weiss seemed to scowl and Ruby leaned in closer at every word.

“So the Cap’n pulls our girl into a hard bank and though the Juniper is fast, we’re outgunned, we’re dodging shots and missiles and torpedoes… when the Cap’n gets this idea. He runs us into an asteroid field, shuts down all power, runs us cold, then sends a little message to the Blood Pact Raiders. This was a gang who had some serious beef with us and Jaune tells them…”

Nora dropped her voice an octave. “Hey Blood Pact! You stink like some dirt sucking slag faces… Come get us we’re here.”

“I don’t sound like that,” Jaune commented idly, the corners of his mouth ticking up.

“And so the Blood Pact shows up,” Nora continued to ignore the peanut gallery, “and runs into Procs! So while the Blood Pact is getting slaughtered by the Procs, we managed to slip through around to escape and finish the run!”

“Best part of that run? Guess what was in the boxes?” Jaune teased as he set his knitting aside.

“Weapons? Medicine? Drugs? Cash?” Yang listed off a number of things the pirates tended to smuggle.

Jaune grinned. “Cheese.”

The table fell to laughing. Even stuck up Weiss-cream cracked a smile.

It was strange to see Ruby snort and laugh with the rest of the crew, causing the rest to laugh even louder along with her. It made Yang smile all the more to see how quickly the Juniper’s crew had accepted Ruby. Sadly there was, of course, the period right after take off when Jaune and Ren had avoided Ruby like a plague, and the mysterious Pyrrha woman was only rarely seen.

But much to Yang's surprise, Jaune and Ren had slowly warmed up to Ruby. Whether it was because Weiss was a constant companion, Ruby’s own seemingly infinite cheerfulness, or because they were all stuck in this tin-can and were pushing day nine, Yang wasn’t entirely sure why. But she was thankful that the others had come to accept Ruby.

“Well…” Jaune yawned as he stood up and stretched, “I should go relieve Pyrrha. We’re going to be dropping out of the Fold soon. Should just be one la...”

He was cut off as alarms shrieked and the ship shuddered into real space. All of them were thrown to the ground, heads cracking on the deck plating and furniture.

“Jaune.” Pyrrha’s voice came over the intercom, her tone utterly calm and collected. That woman seemed to be unflappable. “We have Grimm.”

“Shit.” Jaune spat as he leapt to his feet and raced to the cockpit.

Ren helped Weiss to her feet, while Nora pushed Ruby and Yang back towards their rooms. Yang had to admit she was taken aback by Nora’s sheer brawn as she was shoved out into the hall.

Going to have to have an arm-wrestling match with her once this Grimm business is done. Yang licked the top of her lip as she allowed herself to be physically removed by the engineer.

“What can we do?” Ruby called, as she rushed to join the two.

“Get into your rooms and bar the doors,” Ren ordered calmly as he moved down the hall to the armoury.

“Fuck that.” Yang grinned savagely. Her blood was up. “Give me a gun. I haven’t shot something in a long time.”

“Yeah!” Ruby cheered, “We can help!”

“We’re not helpless, you know,” Weiss pointedly added as she followed them down the hallway.

“I have no doubt that you aren’t helpless, but you are our passengers. We must ensure your safety,” Ren answered patiently, his eyes half-lidded as though the impending danger of a Grimm boarding action was still a rather trivial concern

“You're going to need more than just yourself and Nora,” Yang countered as she shook off Nora’s guiding hand, “You can use us.”

Ren was about to reply when Jaune came over the intercom.

“Ren, lock everything down… I don’t know where they came from but there’s a whole flock of Griffins and at least two Nevermore Grandis. They must have been what pulled us from the Fold. Pyrrha’s coming down to help with defenses.”

Ren let out an irritated breath. “Fine. But you listen to Pyrrha, Nora and myself, understood?”

Yang smashed her fists together, “You got it chief.”

-------

Yang howled as her pistol roared. Three shots hit centre mass on the Griffon who had just phased through the armour plating of the ship. Its inky flesh exploded out in a mess of black viscera, as it howled in pain spreading its wings and rearing up on its back legs. Its white bone mask and four crimson eyes, filled with a primordial hatred and hunger, stared hungrily back at her.

The Grimm screeched and leapt at her, beak wide open to rip and tear into her flesh. Yang ducked and brought the pistol underneath its head and fired. The Grimm’s head detonated as the heavy calibre round tore into what should have been its brainpan and exploded, showering the area with bits of bone and midnight purple blood.

Blood the colour of shadows.

Beside her, Nora grunted as she caught a claw with her shotgun. With her own roar, she twisted it down and threw it off balance, firing two rounds into its bone mask, shattering it like glass. She left it bleeding on the floor, heavily injured and dying.

Nora yelled triumphantly as she then slammed the butt of her gun into the head of the Griffon, putting it out of its misery with a sickening crack.

Behind them, another was gunned down by concentrated fire from Weiss and Ren. Even as they brought three Griffons down, another four phased into the ship, screeching their hunger for the crew.

Yang shuddered at the inhuman, evil sound. She squeezed the trigger rapidly, firing several more explosive shots into the leader, who fell to the floor with massive chunks of its body splattering against the hall. She had fired until her pistol ran dry.

“Void take it all.” Yang spat, as she pistol-whipped one more, caving its skull in with the grip of Ember Celica. “How many of these things are there?”

A shadow danced around her as Blake rammed her heavy boarding blade into its sagging mouth and then down its flank, parting shadow flesh and leaving the creature to wither and die. Blake danced away, a small smirk of satisfaction as she ducked under another swipe. Coming back up, Blake brought Gambol Shroud down onto the neck of another Griffon, before leaping back elegantly as Nora and Yang advanced unleashing a cascade of shots into its still twitching form.

The ship shook; Yang felt the familiar thrum of the magnetic charge in the back of her teeth as the Juniper lashed out in anger. Her eyes widened; the charge was akin to ones that powered the guns they mounted on the Muninn. A ship almost four times the size of the Juniper.

Guess they weren’t lying about that. Yang thought savagely. She wasn’t sure what Captain Arc was aiming at, but as she slamed a new magazine home, she sure as hell hoped he hit the fucking thing.

“Hold them off a little longer!” Jaune’s panicked voice shouted over the coms. “One of the Nevermores is dead, but we got three more...Damnit.”

The link cut out.

Yang scoffed and fired as more Griffons poured through the ship’s hull, filling the Juniper with a screeching mass of shadowy flesh, white bone masks, and hateful, hungry eyes.

“Easy for him to say. Come on you ugly pieces of shit!” Yang roared in challenge quickly reloading before she rushed into the middle of them, firing wildly and striking out with heavy, hammering blows that left the inhuman malice of the Grimm staggering.

They just had to hold on a little longer.

----------

Ruby wasn’t exactly sure how she got here. She originally had planned to be with Weiss and Yang guarding the engines and the point defense weapon bay. Instead, she had been roped into holding the hall to the cockpit with Pyrrha as Griffons phased into existence in front of them.

She aimed for their eyes and mouth. Crescent Rose barked in a steady staccato as she fired a short burst of fire down the hall, expertly hitting her targets. Beside her, Pyrrha twirled her sword in an easy flourish in her left hand. Her right was encased in a bronze-coloured gauntlet as she softly chanted an oddly soothing and peaceful song that Ruby did not know the origins of.

Every now and then, a screeching Griffon would get to close, and Pyrrha would react with inhuman speed and deadly grace. She cut each Grimm down with the spectacular ease of the dancers she had once glimpsed on a holovid. But in person, in fighting, Ruby had never seen anything like it.

Usually, a Grimm, even small ones like Griffons, were tough bastards to put down, often needing half a magazine to put down. Pyrrha, it seemed, just sliced through them.

A perfect strike.

A breathtaking cut.

And the monsters instantly went down, night-red blood glistening on the deck.

Every now and then Ruby thought she saw a brief flash of golden light, but dismissed it. She tensed, getting ready to aim at the next Griffon that phased in. It was probably just the muzzle flash of her rifle.

It seemed like hours the two held the hall that line to the cockpit. They gunned and cut down every demon that came.

“How… How many more?” Ruby panted, as she slid another magazine into her rifle. “I’m running really low on ammo.”

“It does not matter,” Pyrrha’s voice did not waver, she seemed not even to be tired, “We must hold them. If they get to Jaune, then we all die.”

“Cheery thought,” Ruby quipped back as fired another burst down the hall, catching a Griffon who had just phased into existence full in the face with a three round burst.

The air buzzed with electrical discharge. Ruby felt her stomach plummet and the back of her teeth vibrate as the Juniper rocked with the discharge of her primary gun.

“Last Nevermore down!” Jaune crackled to life over the coms, his voice filled with excitement “I’m getting ready to Fold. On my mark in three… two… one… Mark!”

Beneath her feet, Ruby could feel the thrum of energy as the Juniper launched forward into the Fold. They escaped the main horde of Grimm. Ruby could hear the sounds of fighting lighting up in the distance from the few Grimm still remaining as her friends cleared the ship. She closed her eyes and wiped the sweat off her forehead with a grin.

Suddenly, a Griffon charged her, barreling down the hall. Her eyes popped open as it screeched in rage and seethed hatred.

Pyrrha moved to intercept …

And missed.

Ruby’s eyes widened and her grip briefly slipped her rifle as she watched the red-haired woman being battered aside, crashing against the wall and falling to the floor in a heap.

Ruby raised her rifle steadying her shaking hands. Even if she hit, the Griffon could take the shots and still tear her to pieces.

She fired and closed her eyes, ready to feel her flesh being ripped from her bones by its needle-sharp teeth.

Her heart pounded. Seconds ticked by… and there was nothing.

No claws, no tearing, no biting. No pain as her life was ripped from her body by a monster.

Even the screeching had stopped, save for the one or two in the aft that were quickly put down by Yang and the others.

Ruby slowly opened her eyes… The Griffon was dead. The beast was dead. Its jaw loose, its beak hung open. Its tongue shrivelled and its eyes, once lit brightly with malice and hunger, were dull and empty, as though the anger had simply melted away. Its torn, shredded wings lay out stretched and its clawed for legs crumpled underneath it.

It had died not even two feet in front of her. With no wound to speak of.

She looked up and right into the knowing emerald gaze of Pyrrha Nikos.

#RWBY #rwby fanfic #Ruby #Yang #Blake #Weiss #Sol Invictus

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