What Matters
They had arrived at the site of the break in the railway line, and now, the railwaymen were doing a whole load of stuff that Ruby wouldn't even pretend to understand in order to get it fixed again.
Of course, Ruby didn't actually need to understand any of what was going on here: getting the railway back up and running was their job; all that she needed to do was take care of any grimm that might happen to show up.
At least that was her only job since Sunset had made it clear to Red that Team SAPR was not going to be helping out with any of the manual labour. Sunset's reasons for the young huntsmen standing aloof from the work made sense, but Ruby couldn't help but wonder if she would have been nicer about it if Red hadn't mentioned affirmative action when they first met.
Sunset really knew how to hold onto a grievance.
Ruby glanced at her team leader. Together, they stood on the roof of the railway carriage, from where they could see out on either side of them without having their view obstructed by anything but the trees with their scarlet leaves. Although the forest had been cleared on either side of the railway, it hadn't been cleared very far on either side of the railway, and the trees pressed so thickly together that Ruby couldn't see any great distance into them. That was why Pyrrha had taken Jaune on patrol through the outskirts of the forest, so that if there were any grimm around, they'd see them before they came out of the trees, in which case they'd be really close. Too close for the comfort of the railwaymen, probably.
Ruby thought of Pyrrha alone with Jaune, and she… she felt sad.
She wasn’t jealous. Pyrrha was the kindest, sweetest person she knew, and Ruby had a sneaking suspicion that if she told the taller redhead how she felt about Jaune, then Pyrrha would step aside for her with profuse apologies because she would rather suffer sadness on her own account than make Ruby sad.
Which, of course, was precisely the reason why Ruby wouldn’t say anything to Pyrrha about it, because Pyrrha deserved the chance to be happy. Jaune had chosen her, and no amount of Pyrrha attempting to take a step back would change his mind and make him suddenly see Ruby in a different light.
But all the same, it made her a little… disappointed.
"Hey, Sunset?"
"Hmm?" Sunset murmured as her eyes swept the eaves of the forest to their right.
"How do you…?” Ruby trailed off. She wasn’t entirely sure what she had meant to ask Sunset. How do I get over someone? How was she supposed to ask that when Sunset, well, no offence to Sunset, but it was pretty clear even to Ruby that Sunset wasn’t over Flash yet. How do I stop feeling this way? Is it okay for me to feel this way? Just what was I planning to ask anyway? “Nothing,” she said softly.
"'Nothing,' huh? You hide it very well," Sunset observed.
"Huh?"
"Your feelings," Sunset explained. "You hide them very well: Jaune probably has no idea that it still bothers you; Pyrrha has no idea at all that you ever felt… even I can rarely tell that you're still not over him."
Ruby considered denying it, but what would have been the point? Sunset already knew the truth, and it wasn't as though Jaune or Pyrrha were in a position to overhear her. "Does it make me a terrible person?" she asked quietly.
Sunset snorted. "Do you really think it's possible for you to be a terrible person?"
"It's not right, is it?" Ruby asked. "For me to still… you know."
"It might not be right," Sunset allowed, "but it is normal. She has something that you want, and you resent the fact."
“'Resent the…'? What is it that you think I’m feeling right now?” Ruby demanded, her eyes narrowing.
“Jealousy, of Pyrrha,” Sunset said, looking at Ruby as though the answer to that should have been obvious.
“Jealous?” Ruby repeated. “I’m not jealous? Why would you think I was jealous?”
“Because you said-”
“I was talking about the fact that I still like Jaune!” Ruby cried. “I’m not jealous of Pyrrha; she’s my friend.”
“So?”
“Well, how could I be Pyrrha’s friend if I was jealous of her?”
“I sincerely hope that it's possible to be Pyrrha's friend and to be jealous of her,” Sunset replied.
"Why?" Ruby asked.
Sunset turned away from the forest long enough to look down at Ruby. Her ears were perked up, her tail swishing from side to side as she regarded Ruby with an expression that suggested the answer to that ought to have been obvious.
Ruby's silver eyes widened. "Still?"
Sunset nodded.
"But I thought you got over that months ago!" Ruby exclaimed.
"No, I came to see a different side of Pyrrha months ago," Sunset corrected, "but nevertheless, she continues to be… to put it bluntly, she continues to be all of the things that I envied and detested in equal measure in the first place, and although my detestation had subsided… it was her victory that was spoken of in Mistral, though we were all there; we were all there, but all the credit accrued solely to Pyrrha Nikos, whose triumph heralded the Miracle of Mistral. And it was the same story at the docks! I would need a heart of marble not to be moved to envy by such things." She paused. "I didn't stop feeling all envy; I just exercise such self-control over it that Pyrrha doesn't realise. She is what she is, and what she is is…wonderful. Anything ugly that I can't help but feel about that… she doesn't need to see it, and the world doesn't need to know it's there. I am the mistress of my base emotions, not the other way around." She turned around so that she was facing the other direction, looking into the other side of the wood. "For much the same reason," she added, "I can't really give you advice on how to get over a guy, either."
"Is that because it can't be done?" Ruby asked. "Or because you don't want to?"
Sunset's tail stopped moving. Her ears flattened on top of her head. Her body, back turned to Ruby, became very still. "If any other little twerp asked me that, I'd throw them off something very high," she declared.
Ruby couldn't help but chuckle. "It's a good thing I'm not anybody else, then, isn't it?" she asked. "I trust you, Sunset."
"I'm starting to wish you didn't, if you're going to abuse my affection to ask stupid questions like that," Sunset growled.
"Sorry," Ruby murmured with a wince. "It's just that… I want to know if this is going to go away or if I’m going to become… become…"
"Say it," Sunset demanded. "You've come this far, you might as well complete your sentence."
"Become… like you," Ruby finished.
"Bitter?"
"Sad all the time," Ruby corrected her gently. "It hurts you to see him with Weiss, doesn't it?"
"He's not with Weiss yet, thank goodness," Sunset replied. "They are, as Nora would say, not together-together. Although the fact that I think he'd like to be is bad enough. What's worse is that I can't see any reason why she wouldn't want to be with him, short of the… preferential. After all, he's so… what girl wouldn't want him?"
Ruby frowned. "You love him, don't you?"
"I don't know," Sunset replied wistfully. "Maybe it's just the fact that… for most of my life, I didn't have time for st- for boys or dating, and I never even thought about romance. I had other things on my mind."
"Like what?"
"My studies," Sunset said. "Relationships, friends, these were all things that didn't seem to offer me any benefit. Quite the reverse, in fact; they were only going to take me away from what really mattered: mastering my powers, learning new things, unlocking my potential. Chasing my destiny. My ambitions mattered to me more than anything else, more than any potential relationships I might have had with other people. More than the relationship I actually had with my…my teacher. I just…I wasn't interested."
"Okay," Ruby said, wondering at why she felt the need to be so specific. "But then… how did you end up dating Flash Sentry?"
Sunset still didn't look back at Ruby. "I… I arrived in Canterlot with nothing. I had the clothes on my back, and… and that was pretty much it. I had nothing, I didn't know anybody, I had nowhere to go. And that wouldn't have been a good place to be at the best of times, but the fact that I was a faunus made it so much worse. I…you don't know what that's like, and I don't want to tell you." Sunset paused, and now she looked back at Ruby, just as a look of sadness washed across her face like a wave lapping against the shore. "I really don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that Flash and I ended up in a relationship and leave it at that. I doubt that my example could teach you anything useful."
"So… that's it?" Ruby asked. "Do you think you'll ever get over it?"
"I think that you'll get over it," Sunset replied, turning her attention to the woods once more.
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because you don't love him," Sunset said confidently. "It's just a crush; it'll pass."
"What makes you think I don't love him?" Ruby demanded.
"Do you love him?" Sunset asked.
"Well… no," Ruby admitted. "But you couldn't have known that."
"I could, and I did."
"How?"
"Because if you loved him, you wouldn't have found it so easy to put it in a box where no one could tell it was even there," Sunset said.
"Oh," Ruby sighed, deflatedly and disconsolately. This hadn't been much – any – help at all. Certainly, it hadn't gone the way that she'd expected. She'd hoped for a couple of hints at least. "I guess that- Sunset!" Crescent Rose snapped into life, extending and unfurling in a series of hydraulic snaps and hisses. "There, in the trees!" Ruby hissed as she raised the scope to her eye. With the additional magnification, the dark shape that she had seen on the edge of the forest resolved itself into a beowolf. For a moment, it seemed to look right at her, red eyes fixed on Ruby.
Her finger touched the cold metal of the trigger, but before she could fire, the grimm had turned away and fled back into the cover of the Forever Fall forest.
"Did you see that?" Ruby asked.
Sunset had her Sol Invictus to her shoulder, though she lowered it now that the beowolf had fled. "Yeah, I saw it. And if he hasn't gone back to get the rest of his pack, I'll chew on the sleeve of my jacket. Hey, Red!"
"Yeah?" the foreman drawled as she looked up at her.
"Get everyone back on the train and lock the doors!" Sunset yelled.
A single solitary howl rose up into the sky from out of the forest. It did not remain alone for long; soon, it was joined by another voice, then another, then another, and then there were ten or twelve or twenty beowolves or maybe more howling up into the sky from somewhere just out of sight.
"Now!" Sunset snapped. The railwaymen didn't need to be told twice; they dropped their equipment and supplies on the ground and left them there as they scrambled for the train, hauling themselves up into the two train cars and slamming the doors closed after them.
Sunset pulled out her scroll, and her fingers flew across the touchscreen as she activated the train's defences. A pair of gun turrets, one mounted on the engine and the other on the rear car whirred to life, turrets rising and gun barrels extending.
Sunset continued to tap on her scroll. "Let's hope we can get a signal out here," she muttered to herself. "Yes!"
Pyrrha's voice emerged from the scroll. "Sunset? Is that you?"
"We need you back here; we're about to be hit," Sunset said bluntly.
"We're on our way," Pyrrha said before disconnecting the call with equal directness.
Sunset put her scroll away and raised Sol Invictus to her shoulder once again. She swept the barrel from right to left across the forest. "We can't let them get inside the carriages, and we can't let this drag on, or the fear of all those guys in there will attract even more grimm," she said. "We'll shoot down as many as we can; if any of them get too close, I'll get down and block the way; you keep me covered from up here."
Ruby frowned. Sunset seemed to think that just because she preferred to fight in constant motion, using her superior speed to devastating effect, that meant that she couldn't fight standing still, which wasn't true.
It was mostly not true, anyway.
But there was no point arguing about it now, not with the grimm about to-
The howling and the snarling rose to a frenetic new pitch as the beowolves boiled out of the eaves of the forest like bees whose nest had just been poked with a stick. There were two dozen of them, maybe more, all swarming out of the forest, growling and snarling.
Ruby fired first, the sharp crack of Crescent Rose splitting the air. Sunset was only a second behind her, and then the automatic turrets were firing too, making heavy thudding sounds as fire burst from the barrels of the guns.
And the air was thick with shooting.
Jaune and Pyrrha ran towards the sounds of the shooting, their pace increasing as they heard Crescent Rose and Sol Invictus start splitting the air with the sounds of their reports, mingling the sound of gunfire with the howling of the beowolves.
It would probably be fine – they were only beowolves after all, and Ruby and Sunset were pretty amazing – but nevertheless, Jaune didn't slack off, and Pyrrha didn't show any signs of doing so either. How would they feel if it wasn't okay and they hadn't been there to help out because they hadn't run as fast as they could, come as quick as they got, done everything that they could to get there in time?
Still, though he ran through the forest, with Pyrrha loping swiftly ahead of him, Jaune wasn't too worried. This was Ruby and Sunset; they were both heroes, real heroes, unlike… there was no way that they were going to get taken out by a pack of beowolves.
But then, as they cleared the forest and saw the train in front of them, Jaune heard Ruby cry out in pain before the train was rocked by something hitting it on the other side.
"Ruby," Pyrrha gasped, and she somehow managed to find the energy to run even faster before she leapt up onto the roof of the train car.
She'd fired off two shots with her Miló before Jaune, who hadn't gotten the hang of jumping like that even with aura, was able to climb up onto the roof using the metal ladder running up the side.
He saw that there was only one beowolf left.
Unfortunately, it was the biggest beowolf he'd ever seen, or – more to the point, since he hadn't seen that many beowolves, in all honesty – it was bigger than any that he'd read about even when he started bothering to read his textbooks.
He knew that grimm got bigger as they aged, but what the hell? This- this was so big, he was amazed it had been able to move through the forest at all, let alone hide there. He guessed it must spend a lot of time on all fours, but even then, it had only just failed to clear the tops of the trees, and it had crushed more than a few of them getting out after the rest of its pack. It had only one eye, with a vicious scar down the left side of its bone mask where the other should have been, but that hardly mattered, because it was about as broad-shouldered as two train carriages and as big as a hill, and it had so many bone spurs jutting out from every conceivable part of its body that it was practically armoured in them. Jaune could barely see any black fur at all because so much of the beowolf was protected by protruding bone.
The alpha beowolf rose onto its hind legs – it was much taller than the trees when it did that – and roared defiantly.
Ruby had been flung back by the beowolf into the train. Her aura was still up, but she groaned a little bit as she picked herself up.
"It has too much bone," she complained. "I can't get a clean hit on it; it's too well protected."
"It does have considerable armour," Pyrrha agreed as one of her shots ricocheted harmlessly off a bone spur.
Sunset stood in front of the train, her jacket burning as though she was on fire. She swept her hands over her sleeves, and fireballs of burning dust flew from her arms to strike at the beowolf, but they had about as much effect as Pyrrha's bullet or Ruby's implied strike with Crescent Rose. None of them were doing anything because the beowolf was so well-armoured, it was unbelievable.
Jaune had dreamed of moments like this. Not real dreams, but kind of daydreams: the day when Ruby and Sunset and even Pyrrha would be helpless in front of a monster that they couldn't stop, couldn't even slow down, when everyone would cry out for a saviour, and he, Jaune Arc, would step forward and say 'Everything will be alright, because I am here!' and he would slash with his shining sword and strike down the monster and save the day.
But that was a daydream, and this was reality, and the reality was that there was no way he was going to stand a chance against a grimm like this where his three infinitely more talented teammates couldn't do anything about it. They were the real heroes, the ones that mattered.
All he could do was help them along the way as best he could.
And surprisingly – surprising even to himself – Jaune was okay with that. So long as he could help them, like with the boost that his semblance could provide, so long as he could contribute something and not just be a useless idiot in the back, then he could live with it. Because this wasn't a dream; this was real life with real lives at stake, and he didn't have the luxury of sulking because he couldn't be the shining hero up front. Pyrrha, Ruby, they were real heroes, they were the ones who would save the world if anybody could, and so long as he could help them do it, then that was fine by him.
Not that that helped in the immediate situation against this enormous beowolf.
Sunset held onto her gun with one hand, but with the other, she reached into the pocket of her jeans. "Ruby," she said, "if you had a clear shot without so much bone in the way, could you cut this thing in half?"
"I think so," Ruby said. She looked at him. "With a bit of a boost, definitely."
"Pyrrha," Sunset said, "when I give the word, get ready to pin this thing into the ground, okay?"
Pyrrha glanced towards the pile of rails that the railway crew had brought with them to fix the line. "Understood."
"Great," Sunset said. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, holding a couple of crimson fire dust crystals in her hand. "Hey, over here, you big dumbass!" She stepped to the side and threw the dust crystals at the beowolf. Jaune guessed that she must have been using her magic on them, because they flew perfectly up towards the beowolf's face, almost to its one remaining eye.
And then a bolt of green energy shot from the tip of Sunset's finger and struck one of the dust crystals. They exploded in an orange fireball that consumed half of the beowolf's face in flame. The beowolf roared in pain, its bone mask burned as it thrashed in agony, but it still had its eye. And that one eye, red and shining with malice, was now squarely fixed on Sunset Shimmer.
"Yeah, that's right," Sunset said. "That's it, come and get me."
With a thud that made the earth shake, the alpha beowolf, half its face ablaze, dropped to all fours and roared in Sunset's face.
"Now, Pyrrha!" Sunset snapped.
"Jaune," Pyrrha said, and Jaune immediately put his hand to her shoulder and activated his semblance, boosting Pyrrha's aura and thus her own semblance as she held out both hands towards the pile of rails. Five rails rose into the air before Pyrrha gestured with her hands towards the beowolf, and those same rails flew across the air and drove themselves through the only parts of the giant beowolf that weren't completely protected by bone: the four paws and its tail. Pyrrha drove the rails like nails through the beowolf's feet and into the ground beneath it before she bent the rails – hopefully the railway crew had spars – so that the beowolf was trapped, impaled into the ground, unable to do more than roar and growl and bite the empty air as it struggled against its newfound bonds.
And as it struggled, Sunset stretched out her own hands and a few of the bone spurs protecting the beowolf's back became surrounded by a green aura as Sunset began to pull them apart.
Sunset struggled to rip apart the spurs of bone and make somewhere for Ruby to hit it. The beowolf struggled to pull itself free of its restraints. The huntress struggled, and the monster struggled, and it became a question of whose struggle would pay off first. Sunset growled with effort as she matched her- her magic – it was still really weird thinking of it like that – against the strength of the ancient grimm's outgrowths, and the beowolf growled too as it matched its strength against Vale-made steel.
The bones cracked, and Sunset was able to pull them apart to reveal a patch of plain and unprotected black fur near the centre of the beowolf's back.
"Ruby!" Sunset yelled.
"Jaune!" Ruby called.
Jaune leapt down just as Ruby leapt up. He took her by the legs and amplified her aura and her semblance as he threw her up and forwards like some kind of adorable human football.
Ruby flew into the air, trailing rose petals behind her, and then she descended, spinning, like lightning from the heavens, and sliced the great and ancient beowolf clean in half.
And thus, the day was saved once more, and if it hadn't been saved by Jaune, then did that really matter?
The day was saved; that was what really mattered.
They were the ones that really mattered.