Crimson Immoderation Part 22: Ruses and Roses

The crime scene is a hectic mess. The Vale Police Force doing their level best to handle everything but I’m fairly sure they’ve never handled something of this magnitude. The living White Fang members have been carted off to the jail already. The dead cordoned off for investigators to put together a timeline of events. Not necessarily for the sake of further investigation. This is probably the biggest White Fang bust in a decade even if the leader got away. No, this is more a by-the-book sort of endeavour, making sure all the ‘i’s are dotted and all the ’t’s are crossed so they can put away the extremists for a good long time. 

Or more likely put them down. They’re a lot freer with the death penalty on Remnant. While there is a prison, positioned close to the centre of the city to be as far away from the Grimm as possible, the maximum sentence is five years. If a crime is committed that would merit more time than that... Well, it’s safer to just put an end to things rather than let someone stew in their own resentment for a huge chunk of their life and be a Grimm magnet.

Forgone conclusion in this case though. Not that the police are aware of that yet.

With the great mass of things that need to not be moved at the crime scene, we’re being handled a little ways away. Each of us interviewed thoroughly to get our accounts of what happened. Since our intervention was the end of it, they don’t spend much time on us. About as much time as they spend on Ruby and Amber, the latter making her exit soon after. Penny wasn’t asked a single question, instead rushed into a black car with blackout windows by men in suits. And Blake and Sun...

I sigh. Blake and Sun are being raked over the coals and given the third degree in equal measure. The first ones here, the ones who stopped the crime in progress, heroes of the hour. Treated like criminals. Because of course they are. And once again I’m reminded that despite Ad– Auburn and pals being the definition of acceptable targets, the White Fang as a whole have a point. And here I am only adding to the problem... 

No. That’s misplaced guilt talking. Even if I made this branch of the Fang look like scum, they are scum. Only out to make the world worse by revelling in their hatred. They would have done far worse than this if I had left them alone and it wouldn’t have been out of fear of Cinder. The Fall of Beacon would have led them towards the Fall of Haven and beyond. Auburn simply wants humans to suffer and she would have dragged her subordinates to hell with her.

Knowing that, does it make me feel any better about what I set in motion today?

“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?” a sharp and judgemental voice asks as Weiss and Yang arrive on the scene. My white-haired love staring down the detective grilling Blake with arms folded, hip cocked and somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite him being about half a foot taller than her.

“Ma’am, this is official police business, I’m going to need you to–” the detective tries to blow her off.

“I’m going to need you to stop harassing the women who did your job for you!” she cuts him off, hand on hip, self-important pose number four. “These two are huntresses in training. She,” she points at Blake, “Is my teammate. And given she’s responsible for the biggest arrest of your career, I suggest you treat her with a little more respect and a great deal less like she’s a common criminal! Am I understood?!”

Jesus. Is it bad I want to rock her world right now? By the look of Blake and Yang I guess not, though I doubt the former would ever admit she feels the slightest bit like that.

The detective just stares at her, then grumbles under his breath, “Too gods damned early in the morning for shit like this. You two,” he grunts at the two faunus girls he was ‘interviewing’, “You’re free to go. Don’t leave the city. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.” With that, he stomps further away from the scene, shouting “I’m going for a smoke!” adding “Fucking kids,” as he walks away.

“Well,” Weiss sighs dramatically, “Now that that’s dealt with.”

“Thanks,” Blake utters in that uncomfortable way of hers.

“What were you thinking?!” Weiss suddenly shouts.

The cat faunus’ eyes fly wide. “Uhh, what?”

“Do you have any idea how long we were looking for you?! And all this time you were off with some rapscallion tracking down terrorists?!”

“I feel more like a rascal than a rapscallion,” Sun interjects contemplatively, hands behind her head. “Snappier, easier to say, less fancy,” she glances to the side to see the Schnee heiress glaring daggers at her. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Hmph!” she flounced at the unwelcome interruption, only to sigh and continue softer. “Blake, I don’t care what you were. I don’t care what you did. I didn’t know you back then but I know you now. I can’t even try to understand the choices you made in the past. We both know I, that it’s all based on circumstances I can’t really imagine. But we can try to understand each other now. So the next time something crazy happens, or we get in a fight, I just hope you stay with us so we can work it out together rather than running off with some... Rascal.” She levels an unimpressed look at Sun who grins back at her, giving her a thumbs up only to wince at the movement. “Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment,” she curtseys just slightly before turning and zeroing in on me.

I have to straighten up and brace to take her as she jumps at me. Her legs wrap around me as I hold her under her thighs making sure her skirt stays decent. All the while she kisses me like she wants to permanently fuse our lips together. “Nice to see you too,” I say when she finally pulls back.

“You!” she says in that same tone she used for the detective, sounding like she’s mad at me before she leans in to whisper directly into my ear, “Are getting such a nice reward for being such a good boyfriend.” My eye catches a flick her little pink tongue flicking over her lips as she rears back again.

“Uhh, Vlad?” I hear Blake before seeing her around the suddenly embarrassed form of my girlfriend. Did Weiss not realise what she was doing when she jumped on me? It seems like it with how she fights out of my grip to awkwardly shuffle away while trying to hide her flushed face in her collar.

“Yes, Blake.”

Blake is no better off in terms of embarrassment, awkwardly rubbing at her forearm and not quite looking at me. “I just wanted to say... Thanks for... You know. Helping. And I’m sorry for giving you a hard time before. I guess I’m finding out a lot of things aren’t so cut and dry as I thought they were.”

Well isn’t she easily pleased? Though I suppose in this case she probably thinks more of me than is reasonable. Speaking of which, “And thank you for warning me about the detonator their leader was holding. You quite possibly saved my life in that moment.” Emerald deserves such a nice reward for that bit of quick thinking. I honestly wasn’t sure how I would convincingly ‘lose’ the lieutenant given my agility relative to his. “As for your apology, please consider it water under the bridge.” I offer her a handshake. “Perhaps we should start over. Vlad Dracul the Third. A pleasure to meet you, Blake.”

She smirks at me, probably thinking some unkind things but not as insultingly as before. As she reaches to take my hand I have a quick decision to make. “Li-ikewise,” she stutters just slightly as we make contact, showing no outward reaction but that. Just a little increase in her lust. Nothing aggressive, just enough for her to notice her heart beating that little bit harder while her skin is on mine. And then right as I let go, back to normal. She looks confused. “I’ll see you back at school?” she asks more than states as she puts a bit of distance between us.

It was a stronger reaction than I assumed it would be, to be perfectly honest. Why was she so–?

Oh.

Ohhh, right! I forgot! Adam is a girl in this world! She probably thought she was straight up gay until now! I accidentally made her raise a lot of questions about herself that she thought she had already figured out. Oops. Well, not like it’s a bad thing for her to realise.

I notice Yang and Ruby are heading over. Looks like everyone is ready to get the hell out of here. Me personally I’d be happy to get back to the dorm and sleep. Stakeouts are miserable. But... The job isn’t over yet.

Team RWBY and mine go our separate ways, us begging off going back to Beacon for the sake of finding our missing fourth, something we take a couple of hours before we actually do, finding her having a nice relaxing time in some café eating... Cake? Huh. Well obviously she doesn’t eat solely ice cream and semen I suppose. Though she pretty clearly doesn’t care to have anything even resembling a healthy diet. The way her bustline has increased proves it.

... I want to get her pregnant. All of a sudden the desire hits me like a truck. I want to see those puppies swell even more. Hell, I’ll need to!

Oh Blob, Neo as a mum. That’s fucking terrifying. And suddenly my desire to impregnate my little ice-cream cumslut is mixed with a complicated series of regrets.

Grabbing our fourth, we take a winding route towards the warehouse hideout. The much more empty warehouse hideout. LT didn’t take all of his guys but he certainly took most of them. The handful who are left watch nervously as one of their leaders has a loud and potentially violent disagreement with our master thief.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!” LT roars, looming over the smaller figure of Roma.

Roma herself doesn’t seem to give a single shit about his anger. “Oh. Should I? Because I feel like I remember hearing someone say something along the lines of ‘my men will never take orders from a human’.” Her imitation of his accent is about as bad as I could imagine it being. “Who was it that said that? I can’t, quite, recall,” she asks with jabs of her cane in his direction on every word.

I have no idea how Roma managed to get him to volunteer to take over the operation and think it was his idea, but it’s certainly impressive.

The brutish faunus growls low in his throat, “We are getting them out. Today.”

“Oh, good idea! You know what really screams subtle? Laying siege to a police building! Are you sure you aren’t a master criminal like me? If not, you may have missed your calling!”

Auburn’s lieutenant takes a step forward, towering directly over the redheaded woman. “Tell another joke, human trash. See what happens.”

“Oh dear, it seems we have walked in on a disagreement,” Cinder speaks up in her seductive femme fatale shtick. “Really, in such dire times can we afford such infighting, hm?”

The lieutenant stiffens, just barely thinks better of lashing out, instead approaching us and attempting the same looming, menacing routine he just tried on Roma. “I will not leave faunus to rot in prison.”

“Of course not,” Cinder simpers, running her fingers along his muscular arm only to leave a trail of burns behind, “Not when it was your actions that put them there. And certainly not when it was only thanks to our actions that you didn’t join them there.” She ignores his grunts of pain as his aura fights against her power until she pulls her hand away. “When shall dear Auburn be returning?”

“Tomorrow,” he grunts.

“Then we shall wait for a professional to arrive. And it seems for this job, we’ll need the new ally she’s bringing more than ever. Your compatriots aren’t going anywhere.”

Technically true. They died hours ago.

The lieutenant grunts again, whirls on his subordinates and barks at them generic orders about getting back to work. The misery of impotent anger you can only take out on people who can’t roast you alive in an instant.

The problem isn’t quite solved. Auburn is going to present her own problems. Most notably... I don’t have a next stage for this plan. I didn’t know she would be back so soon. But if she’s coming back with Ilia in tow... Auburn only has a singular use to me left. She is a woman who... Practically speaking, I don’t think I can turn her. She’s a zealot, the only thing she cared about as much as her hatred was Blake and now those two things have combined. Just like her subordinates, she’ll have to be removed from play in a permanent fashion.

So. I have to somehow seduce Ilia to my side and keep her on my side, despite how I’m planning to off her boss. Sure. Not a problem at all.

-(-)-

Summer rummaged through her freezer. She could have sworn she had more!

It had been a difficult day, or night, or whatever. Her daughter had asked for help in finding her errant teammate after she ran off. Thankfully her boss was understanding enough about her family emergency and allowed her the day off. If her little girl came desperate for help, there was nothing on heaven or earth that would stop her.

That... Had proven especially true last night. She knew she was supposed to be keeping a low profile. But with Ruby in danger she just acted, there wasn’t a single thought behind it. She just hoped Ruby hadn’t jumped to conclusions. Semblances could be similar in families after all. Ruby had a rose motif for hers too! That was logic, right?

She had asked Ruby to come over today before she left the scene. It was mostly to make sure her daughter was okay mentally after such a dangerous battle. Gods knew Summer herself was still stressed, hence looking for her little stash of pick-me-up. Sadly it was not to be. She had run out. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt naughty enough to go through a whole jar last time if she had known it was the last one.

... Who was she kidding. She would have.

... Ugh, that meant she would need to get more! And Vlad would be all smug about it like a butt!

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. “Come in, door’s open!” she shouted. Well regular smoothies it was. She heard the footsteps of her little girl coming into the kitchen right before she put the top on the blender. “Hi Ruby,” she greeted, setting up the appliance without looking to see her daughter. “Ruby?”

Her daughter looked up at her, stared up at her. Barely blinking, like she wanted to burn the image into her brain. Ruby visibly swallowed, after wetting  her suddenly dry mouth. “I... I don’t care.” The words came out with a heavy quaver to them, an emotional weight on each one.

“Ruby, are you okay?” Summer asked, slowly approaching her little girl.

“I don’t care that you lied.” Her silver eyes were rimmed with tears, “You lied to Dad, and to Yang. You lied to me. But I don’t care. I just–!” She dashed, tackled her mother, slamming into her to wrap arms around her and bury her face in the mother she lost, a loss she never recovered from. “I’m just so glad you’re here!” she cried.

Summer sighed, fondly, not with disappointment. For how could she ever be disappointed by this? The ruse was over, at least as far as Ruby was concerned. Vlad might have problems with that, but... In this moment she couldn’t bring herself to care either. “I’m glad I’m here too my little cookie monster.”

Ruby cried all the harder. “MOM!”