Last Huntress – Chapter 2

-Thorns of a Rose-

It was a nightmare, but it was also a memory. The Breach, the trial against the Hunter program. A replay of the worst week of her life, set to the soundtrack of screams from the ghosts that pursued her relentlessly.

It was a merciless torturer that came each night, that did not relent in it's constant reminder of the past. Every night it was always the same, and every morning Ruby Rose would awake covered in sweat, greeted by the dull glow that filtered through the open door to her bedroom and the beginning pangs of a hangover that had long ago become a daily companion. With a drawn out groan emanating from a dry throat, she draped an arm over her eyes and laid back into the pillow, allowing her heartbeat to begin its struggle to slow after such a sudden awakening.

Even after four years, it remained the same routine. She had hoped that it would eventually fade, that the memory would pass into the shroud of acceptance that so much more of her life had. But no such relief ever arrived. To date, she had found only certain substances that worked to mitigate just how much of the nightmare she had to suffer each night, with alcohol being the most successful. A soft moan sounded at the effort it took to rise up and sling her legs over the edge of the bed, and Ruby glared at the bright slice of light that was being emitted from the room outside her own.

As she started to rise from the soft mattress, her body immediately voiced its protest to her movements with a half dozen different pains flaring up throughout her limbs. The most apparent was her left leg, originating from a hard ridge of rough skin that traveled along the expanse of a thigh. Rubbing the base of a palm at the bare skin in an attempt to alleviate the ache of the old wound, Ruby pushed through the discomfort and made it to a standing position. It was here she took a long moment to stretch her arms upward until she heard joints pop along her entire frame, the movement displacing the black tank top that covered her chest and pulling the clothing up far enough that it exposed the dark fabric of her underwear.

Her first step forward became a stumble as toes tangled with the pile of clothing that she had shed the night before. Rubbing at her left eye to clear the sleep from it, she stared down at the discarded clothes as an internal decision was reached. She gave a lazy shrug of her shoulders before reaching down to grasp the waistline of the dark jeans, pulling them on over her legs in short, jerking movements. Eventually, she managed to push her bare feet through the other side, leaving the fabric held tight to her skin, slowly draining away the warmth of her bed with the lingering chill of the night.

The sensation caused her to suck in a breath, eliciting yet another groan at the realization the environmental control unit for her apartment was down again. Flexing her toes into the hard fabric of the cheap carpet beneath them, she gave one last noise of discomfort before walking forward and placing a single hand on the door to push it open.

Immediately her senses were assaulted by the blaring sound and glaring light of the holoscreen that had been left on overnight, a woman with deep purple hair mumbling on about the daily news. It could have very well have been at normal sound and brightness, but to Ruby's mind, it only caused pain as she leaned over the back of the couch and reached for the glass still sitting on the table. Still filled to half it's volume with a dark amber liquid, she swirled it about a few times before opening her mouth and downing it in one gulp, hissing in response to the familiar burn that swept down her throat.

Her tired, half-effort movements caused her to stumble into the various pieces of furniture on her way into the kitchen, where she sat the glass on top of a precarious pile of dishes that lay waiting unwashed in the sink. A mental note was made to make time for those later, but such a note merely overrode the same forgotten ones that had came before it. She couldn't actually remember the last time she had eaten at the apartment, or drank her own cheap whiskey out of a glass that wasn't already dirtied.

Such concerns were brushed from her mind by the lightest of thoughts as she continued her stilted steps past the tiny kitchen and into the smaller bathroom. Barely large enough to house a sink, a toilet with little leg room to speak of, and a shower whose water could be called warm only at the best times, the bathroom was a room Ruby spent as little time as possible.

It wasn't that it matched the quality of the rest of the apartment in its level of shittiness. No, she actually liked this place, she felt it suited her. It wasn't grand, it wasn't expensive, and it was at its core, functional. It was the mirror she dreaded most within this room.

Her reflection peered back at her through the web of thin cracks that emanated from the right side of the reflective surface, a scarred and weathered reminder of all that had transpired within the last four years. As she placed both hands on the sides of the sink and leaned forward, she gave a grunt of appreciation for the fact that it no longer startled her to stare into a pair of eyes that were not entirely her own.

The left, of course, remained as silver as the day she had been born. A trait rare to the world and inherited from her mother, along with most of her features. But the right eye was a bright and striking red, a color that gave off an eerie glow in the relative darkness of the bathroom. It used to effect her in the early mornings when she saw it, like a cheap jump scare in one of the many boring horror movies that Yang had dragged her to over the years. She would start when she caught that unnatural glow staring back at her from her reflection.

Closer inspection revealed, as it always did, the minute lines that circled the iris. Those that told of the advanced machine that now granted her sight from that socket, a simple cybernetic that did not do more than allow her normal sight. It was better than being blind, she had thought. Raising a hand to touch at the area of skin surrounding the eye implant, Ruby felt along the jagged scar that tore a line from above the ridge of her eyebrow to her jawline.

Almost immediately, she stopped herself. It was too easy to get trapped in past memories, too easy to get lost in tracing old scars. Withdrawing her hand, a flick of a wrist turned the faucet of the sink on and allowed her to splash a handful of cold water into her face. The sudden surge of wakefulness caused her to shake her head and limbs one after another, banishing the traces of sleep as muscles shook loose lethargy.

With damp fingers, she reached up further to massage the fur covered ears that stood tall above her hair line. Another trait inherited directly from her mother, the wolf ears pronounced her clearly as a Faunus. The leftmost organ twitched in her grip as she closed her eyes to bask for a moment in the simple pleasure that came with her inhuman additions.

Much like her hair, each of the furred ears were dyed a deep red hue from the middle to the top, creating a clash of colors between it and her natural black. Her eyes finally slid open, her thin lips pressed into a tight frown as she recalled all that these ears revealed her to be. In the eyes of regular humans, an outlier. In the eyes of society, a beast. Not to be trusted.

Ruby pushed those thoughts from her mind as she leaned back away from the sink. She did not think of what it meant to be a Faunus in Remnant often, of what her race was subjected to a daily basis within the walls of a kingdom she had once sworn to protect. She preferred not to dwell on the things she could not change.

Wearing only a tank top on her upper half, Ruby paused for a moment to admire the black ink that covered most of her left arm. The tattoo was a more recent addition to her body, a circlet of thorns starting on the shoulder then began spiraling down the limb to end in a symbol emblazoned on the back of her hand. A distinctive rose pattern, the emblem she had taken upon entry to the Academy, an emblem that she had taken in honor of her mother.

Beneath the ink, on the inside of her wrist, a long scar stretched from the edge of her hand nearly all the way to the crook of her elbow. She scratched idly at it for a split second, contemplating it and it's matching companion on her right arm before forcing out a ragged breath and turning to leave the bathroom.

Her fingers hooked over the hem of her top and pulled up, leaving her chest bare as she tossed the dirtied garment through the open door that led to her bedroom. The cold caused her some discomfort, but she withstood it as she moved at a quicker pace than before toward the front room. Her objective lay over the back of the couch that sat in front of the holoscreen, a black shirt marked with a red version of the rose design tattooed on her hand.

Standing half naked in the middle of the room as she struggled to get the shirt the right side out, Ruby briefly entertained the notion that she would be quite a sight to any early risers in the broken down complex across the street from her apartment. That stray thought turned into a slightly concerned glance that confirmed the rust covered metal blinds were still closed on the windows, likely sealed shut from the long months she had kept them in such a position.

Smirking in response to her own mental conversation, she finally succeeded in getting the shirt ready. As she pulled her head through the neck of the dark clothing, she focused her thoughts on the painful glow of the holoscreen. It was flashing back and forth between the woman with purple hair and a man speaking at the scene of some crime or another. Narrowing her eyes as she swung her legs over the back of the couch, she slid down into a sitting position to listen.

"-scene turned violent when members of the White Fang fired upon those that had gathered to bar the protesters from the Commercial District." The images on the screen showed a panicked and screaming crowd of Humans and Faunus as gunshots rain out through the protest. "It has been reported that several are wounded, with at least two confirmed dead."

Blinking away what little sleep remained in her left eye, Ruby felt her wolfish ears flatten against her hair as she saw one of the masked Faunus gun down a woman right in front of the camera. "Vale Police released a statement that they have several suspects of who perpetrated this heinous act, but no arrests have been made."

Leaning back into the soft cushion, she barely listened as the newscasters exchanged words of sympathy for the victims. She was far too focused on gathering the leather glove that sat on the table in front of the couch. Tugging it over her right hand, she flexed the material a few times until she felt the slight shock of the circuits within it activating.

Almost immediately, a green interface lit up on the back of her hand, and an electronic voice sounded out. "Good morning, Ruby!"

Cringing at the high pitched tone of the program's voice, Ruby squeezed her eyes shut to guard against a painful throb. "Spring.. Search for any bounties available today, please." Spring was a virtual intelligence of her own design, a simple enough program that could mimic a personality and manage the functions between her glove and her scroll. The green light winked out, leaving her to tentatively open her eyes once again, breathing a sigh of relief as the thudding in her head subsided.

"-head of Schnee Dust & Arms Corp." A sharp intake of breath was sucked through grit teeth as Ruby slowly raised her eyes back to the holoscreen, a silent prayer that she had simply heard wrong. Sure enough, it was Weiss that she saw at a crowded press conference. "-still has yet to respond to allegations that she was involved in the events that led to her father, Jacques Schnee, to take his own life."

"Ms. Schnee rose to the position of CEO in the aftermath of her father's death, restoring the company to profitability by entering into a merger with the highly lauded Mjolnir Arms." Icy blue eyes swept along the rows of journalists that shoved microphones toward the podium where Weiss stood, a scowl evident on the young woman's face. "When asked if she had a hand in deposing her father before his death, Ms. Schnee merely stated no comment. Later, when the incident of the Breach four years ago was brought up, the CEO of Schnee Corp. ended the press conference early in response to this comment."

The looped shots of the press release suddenly shifted to a close up of the podium, and of Weiss herself, close enough that Ruby could see the thin scar that traveled through an eye. There was little of the warmth that she remembered in those cold blue orbs, now set into an intense and angry glare. In front of the podium, a reporter was trying to get the woman's attention.

"Ms. Schnee! Ms. Schnee! Several of my sources state that you were at the heart of the Breach when it began four years ago." As angry as it had looked, the previous expression of Weiss' face had been only a small amount past what was the usual scowl, but now there came an unbridled look of rage. "Would you be able to tell us who it was that caused the catastrophe that effectively ended the Hunter program?"

Ruby was frozen in place as she watched Weiss lean over the small podium, the slender fingers of a hand curled into the edge of the wood with knuckles quickly turning white. "This conference is over. Security, get them out of my building!" The CEO turned to leave the small stage at a brisk pace, revealing as she left the cover of the podium that the right sleeve of her white suit jacket was folded over and pinned to the shoulder.

And then the scene switched back to the newscaster with vibrant lavender hair, denying Ruby the chance to further study her old teammate. "A Schnee Corp. representative later released a statement claiming that it was the callous and accusatory way the deaths caused by the Breach were mentioned that was responsible for ending the interview early."

She wasn't sure how much time passed after the newscast ended, but immediately after Ruby fell back into the couch. It had been a long while since she had thought of Weiss, and even the mere mention of her name had left a dull ache on the raw edges of her heart, to see her after the last few years generated a much greater effect. It was like a knot in her chest that continually twisted itself until it was torn apart, and she likely would have sat there for longer staring at news she was not listening to if a chime had not sounded from her glove.

"Excuse me, I have a message for you." The bright and cheery voice of the construct was accompanied by the haptic interface lighting up over the back of her hand and wrist, displaying a message that stated her request had been denied. "Captain Nikos of the Reconstructed Residential District Precinct wished for me to tell you," The voice dropped to a deeper tone, almost to a mocking degree of seriousness. "'Hello, Ruby. You should know better than to come to me for bounties now, after what happened with the last few.'"

'Reconstructed Residential District' always caused a dry chuckle to slip out of her when she heard it. It was the proper name for the district, which meant it was just a pretty name for slums. It was the Residential District the city had so graciously given to the poor that eked out an existence in the dirty and rundown streets of the Reconstruction Zone. And even with the reminder that she lived in the terrible part of an already shitty kingdom, Ruby didn't feel upset about Pyrrha's message.

She had screwed up the last half dozen bounties, three of them ending with her barely escaping being charged for assault with how she handled the criminals. It probably hadn't helped that she had been liquored up when chasing them, and it wasn't exactly legal the way she caught them. Dust Rounds were a topic of much debate on the global scale right now, given the way they were associated with the now decommissioned Hunters. She would just have to go to Pyrrha herself, beg for some work to earn back some faith.

A voice in the back of her mind remarked that she should probably do that sober.

Flexing her fingers within the glove deactivated the interface to access Spring, allowing her to relax for a brief moment before she leaned forward to grab the holster that was set on the table between the couch and the holoscreen. As she stood, Ruby unwound the belt from around the weapon, eventually revealing the hammer of a large revolver.

The belt itself was made of a quality leather, with several dozen loops set in it to hold the various rounds she could load into the weapon. They were grouped according to which kind of Dust was set in them, the tips colored in relation to the crystals used. Buckling the belt on as she moved toward her room, Ruby snatched a faded scarf off the back of a chair as she stepped through the doorway, wrapping it about her waist to somewhat cover the ammunition.

Pausing at the foot of the bed, she fished out her vest from a pile of clothes on the floor off to the side. A bright red color, the sleeveless vest sported a hood not unlike the hood of the cloak she had worn when she was younger. Smirking at the memory of a dorky teenager, she pulled the garment over her arms and settled it into place, running a hand through her hair to get it set in just the right way so that it fell about her right shoulder. With a look towards the bathroom, she decided to forgo checking if she was presentable, and turned towards the door that led out of the apartment.

The stairs that ran from the door of Ruby's apartment to the road were really more of a catwalk, immediately moving to the right as she exited and following it to the end, where she turned and slid down a ladder to reach the alleyway. She didn't mind that the old rusted walkway was more of a deathtrap than anything else, because it assured her that the rent matched the actual quality of the living space. Dirt cheap worked for her.

As she stepped into the main street, it was sensory overload with the sights, sounds, and smells of early morning Vale. It wasn't exactly pretty. The neon signs that announced all the ramshackle businesses that lined the sidewalks were just beginning to flicker out as the first rays of the sun crested over the horizon, and the factory workers who were starting the morning shift were just leaving their homes. The roads were empty of vehicles, as most of the residents here in this District far too poor to afford commuting to and from work, and so people walked brazenly in the middle of the streets.

The downside to being a Faunus was enhanced senses, something that had served her well when she had been in a combat school. Now, it was just a nose that could smell garbage that was even harder to ignore, and ears that twitched to pick up the sounds of infants crying and couples yelling at one another in the apartment complex across the street. Her hands moved to pull her hood up, keeping the furred wolfish organs atop her head low to her hairline in order to disguise herself. Like this, she could be mistaken for a human. Like this, she could avoid any unpleasantness.

It was a precaution she took whenever she made the journey to Yang's place, the bar down on the dividing line between the two Districts. She'd made the mistake of having her ears bared a few times, and both her and the humans who had stopped her had paid for it. Now it was simply better to hide. Of course, her sibling had decided to build a livelihood there, opening the bar in what was the roughest area of the worst part of the whole city.

But that wasn't exactly Yang's fault. This had been a booming part of the city a couple of years ago, one of the most repaired sections of the Reconstruction Zone and a symbol of humans and Faunus working together. Back when there had been an actual shot at equality. Glancing around at the broken down and abandoned buildings that seemed to occupy every corner was a bit disheartening to Ruby now, remembering what it had been such a short time ago.

The reason for the decline was twofold. A few years ago the relations between her race and the humans had taken a blow when a study had found that Faunus genes were dominant when in competition with their human counterparts, and what came from that was an atmosphere that bred fear and hatred until a spark ignited the powder keg. The entire area was nearly burned to the ground in the resulting riots, until the military stepped in and the governing body of Vale, a council made up of the heads of the most powerful companies in the city, drew a dividing line down the center of the District.

It wasn't forced segregation, not exactly. The laws put into effect didn't force a Faunus to work only on their half of the District, but it certainly made it more economical. Living expenses, taxes on grocery items, everything was less expensive if a Faunus stayed in their half. And when the factories on the other half decided to stop hiring them, it became impossible to find a job outside of their half, making the whole thing a moot point and forcing the segregation anyway.

It ended up being a very fascinating study of how quickly people stopped working together when the Grimm were no longer a threat. And when the two separate races stopped working together, it only became easier for hatred to fill the ever growing gap between them.

On the less lawful side, the two criminal gangs that controlled the underworld of Vale had decided to fight to standstill more or less right down to that imaginary line. On the Faunus side of things, there was the White Fang, a savage cartel that did not admit humans into it's ranks, and claimed to be using its underhanded methods as a way of improving things. On the other side of the line was The Gentlemen, a ruthless gang ran by the wealthy club owners on the more upscale half of the District, who gained favor with the humans by spouting rhetoric that they were protecting those under their protection from the animals that stalked the shadows just a few blocks away.

In the end, Ruby supposed it didn't matter what either gang said. Both ended up pushing the same drugs, running the same black market that funneled military grade weapons down to the common gangsters on the streets, and kept up the same petty bid for territory that they always had. Not that she was opposed to such things. Violent crime and drugs kept the police busy, and more crime meant more bounties. Which, hopefully, meant more cash flowing to her pockets. At least, until recently. As she understood it, some White Fang bigwig had murdered one of The Gentlemen's top dogs in a suicide bombing, and a tenuous peace treaty had been reached between the two groups for the time being as both restructured their hierarchy to account for the sudden vacancy.

But that didn't solve her two immediate problems, in that the bounties were closed off unless she was able to beg the great Pyrrha Nikos to throw her a lifeline, again. And that the lines drawn by both the lawful and chaotic elements of society somehow had landed her sister's bar smack dab on the edge of it. There was at least two murders a week in this area, gang related or not, and any efforts to get the abandoned buildings restored was met with another bonfire that reduced the building back down to rubble.

Yang said it was good for business, all the high tensions.

Not that Ruby was worried about her sister. After all, she had seen the drunkards of the bar who attempted to fight her sibling get utterly destroyed, and Yang was smart enough to pay the protection money asked of both The Gentlemen and the White Fang. In return, the bar was used as a sort of peace summit between the two gangs. But the problem with gangsters is that peace isn't really a concept they get, which resulted in more fights, more business for the bar, and more murders. Which, of course, meant more bounties when the police force inevitably failed to do their job.

Even as Ruby was shaking her head at the absurdness of it all, her ears twitched beneath the hood that confined them, catching the sound of cries of pain and blows landing. She rounded the corner on the final street she would have to walk down, finding a surprisingly empty void on one side of the road. People were skirting around the edge of a fight, tossing glances in the direction but minding their own business, as was the way of Vale these days.

Moving with the group that moved around the fight as to not attract attention, she caught sight of what was happening. Three Faunus, a couple of dogs and one with ears she wasn't quite sure what to make of, were surrounding a human who was already on the ground in the fetal position. They were kicking at the poor man, and snarling down towards him with feral expressions on their faces. Even as she watched, one of the dogs looked up to catch her staring, causing her to avert her gaze as quickly as possible. A warning growl was all it took for her to kick her ass into gear, making a beeline towards the corner she would need to go around.

Not her place, not her problem.

Ember Heights. It was a name her sister had derived from the weapons the fiery blonde had wielded until the Breach, when they had been relinquished to the proper authorities along with every other Hunter weapon. It was also known throughout the District as the roughest and most successful bar that wasn't owned by either gang.

Ruby pushed open the doors to the bar with a grimace on her face as she was hit with the stench of spilled booze and blood. It looked and smelled as though the morning crowd was already in full swing, though she used the description of 'morning' loosely. The large common area was filled with Faunus and humans that had just come off the grueling midnight shifts at the factories, and had come to blow off steam, either with drink or with fighting.

On one hand, she saw the beers that were being drowned in gulps by a couple dozen patrons on the main level. On the other, she heard a chorus of cheers rise out of the basement, where the fighting ring was sure to be packed with the more frustrated of the disenfranchised. "Good morning, Ruby!"

The bubbly voice that caught her attention was none other than her favorite waitress at Ember Heights, Velvet Scarlatina. The rabbit Faunus had gone to Beacon with her and Yang, and though there had been tough times after the Breach, the cute brunette had found her way here. Ruby's sister had been good to the rabbit, offering a job and making sure none of the drunkards laid a hand on her and got away with it. It might have been her imagination, but the quiet and shy girl she remembered at school had somehow become someone who enjoyed the lecherous stares she got from the more inebriated patrons, male and female combined.

Ruby was pretty sure she had gotten drunk enough to hit on the rabbit on more than one occasion, earning a rather rough knock upside the head from Yang each time she attempted to do so. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she threw back the hood of her vest to free her wolfish ears and stalked over to the bar where Velvet sat wiping down the stains from the previous night's batch of customers. "Morning, Velv. Can I get a glass of the usual?"

Brown eyes glanced away before returning to her, causing her to narrow her own in suspicion as the rabbit leaned back and looked toward the door that led upstairs, where Yang would undoubtedly be, sleeping off the double shift her sister had likely pulled. "You might.. Want to talk to your sister first."

"Right, cut off again." Letting out a soft growl, Ruby rubbed a hand along the scarred surface of the bar. It looked like she was going to be sober for her meeting with Pyrrha whether she liked it or not. "Alright, how about a water? I don't want to argue with her today."

"That I can do!" The rabbit's lips broke into a wide grin at her request, and a clean glass was filled and placed before her in a matter of seconds, filled halfway with a clear liquid. This happened every couple of weeks it seemed. After a night of heavy drinking, Yang would throw a fit about it and cut her off for a few days before her sister realized it was hopeless. It was a cycle of futility, but Velvet always remained optimistic, and dealt as the middle woman for their pointless spats. So damn optimistic, as if this time was going to be different. "Anything else I can get for you? We could fry up some breakfast if you wanted."

Taking a long draught from the glass she had been given, Ruby finished in all in a few gulps before sliding it back across the counter. Sometimes the way Velvet was perpetually happy bothered her. Not that she hated happiness or anything as pathetic as that, only that the rabbit had gone through the same crucible as they all had, even lost the rest of her team in the Breach. The difference was the other Faunus had made it out the other side without losing her way, unlike Ruby and so many others. Her nights were spent in double shifts here at the bar, while her days were filled with trips to the orphanage down the street. The older woman actually seemed happy, not to mention being a regular saint.

No, Ruby didn't hate that Velvet was happy. She hated that she looked so damn miserable when she stood next to the rabbit, a comparison made frequently by both herself and her sister. After all, if the older woman could put down the life of a Huntress and thrive as a civilian, why couldn't she? She hated herself far more for that failing than she could ever begin to dislike the cheery Faunus. "No thanks, Velv." A brief smile touched her lips as she pushed off from the bar, leaning back in to avoid a large stumbling man who smelled as though he hadn't managed to reach the bathroom in time. "Uh, let Yang know I'm headed to the Secondary Precinct, yeah?"

"Will do, Ruby. Good luck!" The smile that was flashed her way was warm enough she summoned up a genuine response of her own, grinning at the rabbit for the first few steps as she back away from the bar before turning and heading for the door. It was always a good part of her day, seeing Velvet. The older woman didn't lecture her, only hoped for her to make the right choice. It also helped that her choice of profession was never drawn into question like it was with Yang. Being a bounty hunter might not be the most prestigious of jobs available, but it sure beat working at the factories or taking her sister's charity. Plus, she liked what she did, being a bounty hunter came easy to her. She knew hunting.

Hell, she was born to be a Huntress.

Author's Note: Ah, the classic four year jump skip, and the sharp slope Ruby's life has gone down since that trial. Bit of a quick update because I actually have had most of this chapter done for a couple months now. Just the last half was all that needed to be added on to make it good to go. Later updates will probably be as sporadic and crazy as my other stories. I am sorry about that.. Anywho! Thank you to everyone who followed, favorited and especially reviewed the first chapter! It's good to see so many people are excited for this. I'm certainly excited! Please feel free to drop a review with your thoughts! -Fox