//------------------------------// // Chapter 40: Humans and Faunus // Story: Fillies and Monsters // by Solaris Vult //------------------------------// Twelve people were walking down the streets of Vale… From the moment they woke up, the fillies could tell this was a special day, first of off, it was a day off, a Friday off, something different, something that only happened back in Equestria when it was a holiday, like Nightmare Night, the Summer Sun Celebration, Crystal Day, Aquillianina… Although that last holiday was more a griffon tradition, there was still plenty of pegasi who celebrated it. Then, Team RWBY and Team JNPR offered to take Team TASS down to Vale, and a quick vacation was welcome, so obviously, the fillies obliged… When they came down into the town, taking the long way down, not wanting to bother the airship pilots, the first thing everyone noticed were the balloons, banners, and a general cheery mood that permeated the city. “What’s going on?” Asked Apple Bloom, torso still bandaged from her broken rib. “The Vytal Festival,” Weiss replied, “A festival dedicated to the cultures of the world,” She continued, “It’s a biyearly celebration marking the end of the great war.” “Isn’t that still two weeks away…” Diamond muttered, remembering the syllabus she had gotten. “Yes, but, it’s one of the largest celebrations in the world, preparations always happen ahead of time to ensure that everything is ready… Amity Colosseum will need to be dragged all the way from Atlas, huntsmen will need time to practice, and people from all over the world will be sailing or flying to the chosen kingdom, all of those things with take time, lots of time, and that isn’t even counting the economics or the logistics that go into this event, it’s all simply breathtaking, the amount of organization, that is why we’re preparing so early.” “Well, where are you taking us?” Scootaloo said to Weiss. “Myself, and my team, are heading to the docks to welcome the students sailing in from other kingdoms, I hear several have arrived by airship already, but I want to see and greet all the new students…” “I’m going out to grab some dust, it’s all on sale,” Pyrrha said. “Yeah, and I’m taking the chance to check out my favourite pizza place!” Jaune said, excitedly. “I think I’m going with Jaune…” Apple Bloom said. “And I’m going with Pyrrha, could be a good chance to pick up more dust for Rainbow and Dash,” She said holding up her pistols, “And I can get some of that hard-light dust…” Blake and Sweetie were ignoring everyone else, and chatting about books. Blake began, “So, what are some of the books from your town, you mentioned yesterday that your village had completely different books than the ones here, you never even heard of any of the books I showed you.” “Oh, well, let’s see… There’s Daring Do, a story about a faunus who goes into grimm infested jungles and ancient temples to recover ancient artefacts and fight her nemesis, a criminal called-” Sweetie and Blake continued on, while everyone else still walked on… First Jaune and Apple Bloom wandered off, followed by Pyrrha and Scootaloo, then Ren and Nora left the group until it was just team RWBY and half of team TASS. “Why are we visiting these stupid docks?” Yang muttered. “They smell like fish…” Ruby whined. “Didn’t you hear a word of what I said…” Weiss replied, annoyed. “Umm… No, I was mostly ignoring you…” Yang continued. Weiss scoffed and watched as a ship started to sail into the port and dock, slowly, at one of the piers. Sweetie was distracted by her conversation with Blake by a man walking past, Blake took this as a sign that their conversation had ended and turned to answer Yang’s question, “She wants to spy on the newcomers, to make sure she has the upper hand in the tournament…” As Weiss replied to Blake’s comment, Diamond realized she should do the same, and watched the ship intently, seeing if any of the people, or cargo, being unloaded were anything she should make mental notes of. Meanwhile, Sweetie was interested in a man walking by, he was tall, taller than most she had seen, and he had bright green eyes, that almost glowed, along with hair so black it almost looked blue… He was carrying boxes of sugar, nothing but sugar, but that wasn’t what caught her attention, it was, instead, the strange magic swirling around him… He was veiled in a field of green magic, that was different than his aura, this was something else, something she had seen before, but she couldn’t quite place it… Quietly, Weiss snuck up beside Sweetie, then, whispering into her ear, she said, “So, have that weird semblance-book done yet?” “I’m working on it, should be done soon, it takes a long time to copy an entire book by hand…” She retorted, in truth, she wasn’t copying it down by hand, she simply used a spell Rarity had taught her, one the copies patterns, using it to copy the book page by page, the actual reason it was taking so long was so she could look over each page herself and make sure that there was nothing in there too dangerous for Weiss to try. She muttered, “Typical faunus, so slow…” “What’s your problem…” Blake replied, Weiss last comment loud enough for Blake to hear. “My problem,” She replied, “I just do care for faunus, particularly those criminally insane enough to join the White Fang.” “Team Trass are not evil, they are your friends.” “Blake’s right, I’ve known them since they first came to Vale,” Ruby muttered. “And, the White Fang are hardly a bunch of psychopaths, they are a collection of misguided faunus.” “Misguided-” Weiss and Blake continued bickering, but Diamond was keeping a close eye on the ship, a minute or two later a yellow-haired young man leapt out of a barrel of bananas being unloaded from the cargo hold and one of the workers yelled, “Stop that faunus! You no-good stowaway!” Everyone turned to see the man, now hanging from a lampost by a yellow-furred tail, eating a banana, “Hey! A no-good stowaway would have been caught, I’m a great stowaway!” A police officer moved up to the lampost, “Hey, get down from there this instant…” When the man threw the banana peel at the officer’s face and leapt, running down the docks, toward the street… He turned the corner, running down the road, and right as he was passing the group, winking at Blake, Diamond raised her sword, and the monkey faunus ran right into the blade. He fell down with an “Oww…” And the police officer caught up, pulling some handcuffs from his belt and cuffing the monkey as everyone watched. “What was that for?” Blake asked Diamond. “He clearly broke the law, I just simply took my chance to stop him…” “Thank you!” Weiss replied, “I can’t believe I’m saying that to a faunus,” She muttered, too quietly to be heard by anyone except for the four-eared faunus, and Blake. Blake wore a look of anger and moved over to Weiss, meanwhile, the monkey faunus was being dragged away by the police, saying, “Umm, I can explain, I’m actually a trainee huntsman, when the rest of my team gets here-” He trailed off. Blake and Weiss continued to argue in the background, but, as this was going on, Diamond was surprised to see one of the police officers walk up to her, “Thank you for the help,” He said. “It wasn’t a problem, I’m glad to help… Even if some people are too lazy to do so,” She said, eyeing Sweetie. “Don’t mention it.” “What’s going to happen to that monkey guy?” Sweetie asked. “Not much, he’ll probably just get fined, and perhaps a few days in jail, so long as he doesn’t have anything else on his record…” “Good to hear,” Sweetie finished. The moment was slightly ruined by Blake and Weiss arguing in the background. Ruby and Yang turned to the others, “Come on, let’s go get some ice cream or something while those carry on,” Ruby said. “Good idea,” Sweetie said. “I’ll stay here,” Diamond finished. After returning from getting a snack, Sweetie passed a girl with red hair, and a green and white dress… What confused her the most was the girl’s aura… Being a unicorn, she could feel magic, and if she concentrated, she could see its glow, this person had, like most, a translucent field around them, their aura, marked a bright green for her, but she also had the hard, pure, colour of enchanted crystals, or in this case, dust, all inside her, like a maze of veins… She continued staring, the girl oblivious, until she passed out of sight. Penny had just arrived in Vale yesterday, it reminded her a lot of Mantle, but warmer, cleaner, and more… Friendly… Yes, that was the word she was looking for, friendly. She nearly tripped or ran into someone, her eyes darting between all the buildings, and she waved at everyone who passed… The tournament was still some time away, and Ironwood wouldn’t be arriving for another half a week, those ships were real slow when on low-power mode, but no one wanted to waste dust unless it was necessary, and she could see the logic in that, she had a lot of dust inside her too. She walked past two girls, huntresses, chatting about something, one with bright pink and purple hair wearing a heavy white coat, and the other with black hair and a black and red dress with a combat skirt, then, walking past the docks, she overheard two young women fighting, arguing about something, she didn’t like it, why did they argue, and about what? As she listened, she realized it had something to do with faunus, but she still didn’t understand what was the problem… But, she continued walking, Ironwood didn’t like it when she chatted with strangers… Sweetie Belle was sitting outside, in the hall… Night had just fallen, from what she heard, Weiss and Blake had been arguing all day. And, the little faunus didn’t want to deal with Diamond Tiara… Not when she should have been the leader. She was reading through her spellbook for the first time in a few days, flipping through the pages… Her eyes settled on one of the most complicated matrixes she had ever seen, five consecutive circles with a triangular overlay, a pentagonal core, and a nearly fractal interlacing pattern, the amount of arcane code was hard to comprehend, and several parts of that code could be modified. After spending a few minutes just staring at the code and trying to make sense of it, Sweetie realized that the null parts were coordinates, memory manipulation spells linked to a spacial manipulation spell, a start and exit point, as well as several safeties, a location blockage integer, more and more lines having to do with spacial manipulation, the complexity, was beyond what she could easily process… And having to keep all that info in your mind a once, even for a brief period, would be taxing, plus, the magical toll on having to manipulate space in such a way… But, curiosity took a hold of her, and she tried to memorize the shapes, she had already memorized the basic orientation of the circles, the triangle, which she had replaced with a hexagram to lend more stability to the spell, as well as make it easier on herself, and the pentagonal core when there was a sound of a door opening far down the hall, and the sound of boots running on the carpeted floor. She looked up from her book to see a black shape run past her, and the voice of Ruby, far down the hall, shouting “Blake! Come back!” Sweetie leapt to her feet, put the book away, and ran after her, saying “Blake! Blake! What’s wrong!” “Leave me alone!” She retorted and seemed to run faster. Sweetie wasn’t going to catch up with her… That hallway led to the outer doors which opened up into the courtyard… She guessed at the general location, planting it firmly into the arcane code, then put herself as the start point, she wasn’t going to be able to remember the interlacing pattern, but she could guess… The code was planted in her mind by her attempts to understand it, and the safety lines would ensure that if anything went wrong, the spell would fail… Thus, she put the matrix together into her mind, and pushed. There was a flash of green light, the loud pop of air displacement, and she vanished. [Discontinuity] Blake ran down the hall. That damn slip-up! She wouldn’t be able to return now, now that the whole school would know what she is, she leapt down the stairs five steps at a time, thinking of that time she slid down the hillside, on to the SDC train. With a slam, she got to the ground floor and turned to see the door to the courtyard… Rushing forward, she threw the doors open, and right as she stepped outside, there was a flash of light. Appearing right in front of her was Sweetie Belle, she sparked green for a second and moaned as she fell over, aura broken. “S-Sweetie!” Blake said, concern in her voice, but also a good amount of fear. Sweetie pulled herself back up, “S-Something went wrong, didn’t get the interlacing right, b-but, my aura kept me alive…” She said, coughing, “Blake, what’s wrong.” “I-I don’t want to talk about it, I can’t talk about it…” Blake tried to move, to run away, but pressure on her legs held her still, green bands of energy wrapped around her ankles, they broke the moment Blake kicked out with as much strength as she could, and Sweetie fell to the ground, coughing from more exertion. Blake looked guilty for a second, then made to run again, when a voice behind her caused her to freeze in her tracks, “Blake!’ It was Ruby. She ran out into the courtyard, quickly followed by Yang and Weiss… Blake couldn’t escape now. “S-Sweetie?” She said, looking at the injured Sweetie Belle.” “Blake Belladonna, did you do that!” Weiss said, angry. “N-NO!” Sweetie corrected, “Blake didn’t do anything wrong, It was a mistake on my part, I got something wrong when…” A fit of coughing interrupted Sweetie for a second before she continued, “Uhh, I got something wrong when I used my semblance...” Everyone was confused, why was Sweetie’s semblance so, versatile… Only Weiss had some of an understanding, but that wasn’t important at the moment, “Blake, what’s wrong, you can trust us,” Yang said. “I-I…” Blake tried to say, before kneeling down and crying… “It’s ok,” Sweetie said, moving up to give Blake a hug, “You can tell us, whatever it is we will understand.” “R-Really…” Blake said in a sad, pathetic, voice. “Yes, isn’t that right, Weiss…” Ruby replied, staring at the girl in white with a harsh glare, who simply scoffed and crossed her arms. Ruby rolled her eyes. Blake cautiously began, “S-So, you want to know more about me?”