Chapter 8: In Which Verdan is an Idiot

Saturday

7/11

1130

"-can finally get out of here, Yang?" Verdan would have groaned if he was willing to use the energy it would require. Sleep. . . "Yep! Nurse cleared me, said I was fully healed from last night!" Verdan was being slowly dragged kicking and screaming, figuratively of course, into the world of the awake and was not happy about it at all. "She did say that my aura was not full yet, so I'm supposed to be careful and not exert myself for several days, but I should be all healed by the end of the week." Raaaggghhhh! The noise was disturbing his rest, Verdan was not happy. "I'm glad that none of our team suffered any serious injury from last night." While Weiss's voice was normally perfectly satisfactory as far as voices go, to Verdan, who was clutching onto sleep was a death grip, it was annoyingly high-pitched and shrill. "Awwww! You do care, Ice Queen!" Weiss shrieked, "Get off me!" as Blake and Ruby giggled.

Verdan tried to do something, but he couldn't move at all. While it made sense, some form of sleep paralysis due to exhaustion, it was still very irritating, as it meant he couldn't even so much as give them a glare for being loud, let alone throw something at them. "Seriously, though," Verdan heard Weiss continue. "Last night was very hazardous, it's lucky we're in as good a shape as we are."

"Yeah! Team RWBY's tougher than any robot they can throw at us!" Yang said. Her declaration was accompanied with a dull thud that Verdan's sleep-befuddled mind said was either her bashing her fists together or someone dropping a five-kilo bag of gummy bears.

"We've certainly gotten better at working as a team," Blake said. "Our team attacks worked great. And, Sun and I managed to hear some important stuff at the meeting. We can use that and keep working on our investigation."

"I dunno about you girls, but I want lunch! Who's coming?" Yang asked. Ooh, food sounds good, Verdan thought. He tried to move, but he was still mostly asleep. "Lunch sounds good. Weiss?" Blake asked.

"Sure, let's go. Come on, Ruby." Weiss grabbed Ruby, pulling her away over her protests of wanting to stay. With blessed silence reigning once more, Verdan slipped once more into sleep.

Δ Insert Scene Change Here Δ

Saturday

7/11

1500

When Verdan awoke, he felt refreshed and recovered from the previous night. Nobody was around, team RWBY having disappeared. He pulled his scroll out of his pocket and saw that it had a message alert. Checking the message, it appeared to be an automatically-generated message summoning him to Ozpin's office. He grabbed his gear from the table beside him, pulling on his coat and slinging his satchel and rifle across his shoulders.

Verdan made his way across campus to the CCT, entering the elevator to take him to Ozpin's office. The elevator doors slid open, revealing Ozpin's office. "Mr. Allen, please, have a seat," the man called from his desk. Verdan slowly walked in, taking in the view from the windows. Whatever his views of the man, he certainly had a good office. He sat down slowly. "You wanted to see me, sir?" he cautiously asked.

Ozpin took a sip from his coffee mug before answering with a non sequitur. "How are you feeling? I understand you are suffering from a large case of sleep deprivation and aura exhaustion."

Verdan took a deep breath. "I'm feeling decent, sir. I'm still feeling tired, but I am obviously well enough to function. I believe it will take several nights of sleep to fully return to normal, though."

Ozpin nodded. "Good to hear. Now, I wanted to talk to you about your mission. Ms. Belladonna and Mr. Wukong told their story of when they ran into you last night. I want to hear from you what happened, as well as how you got there."

"Well, I got to Aldur Island on Saturday morning. Over the course of the week, I searched the reported area in a spiral pattern, traveling further out from my landing site. Oddly enough, I never encountered any Grimm. Is that normal?"

"Yes, it is. Aldur Island has always been rather devoid of Grimm, something that we have taken advantage of to set up settlements and a nature park," Ozpin explained.

Verdan nodded slowly, assimilating the fact into his knowledge of the Grimm. "Anyways, I explored the park, looking for any White Fang activity around the ruins. During my search, I encountered neither people nor ruins, well except for one hiker, until a week later, on Saturday. I met up with a forest ranger, or at least someone who wore the uniform of a forest ranger. This stranger decided to tag along with me. Then later that day, I ran across on old tower. It appears to only date from recently before the Great War, nothing too interesting. However, what was interesting was what had been done to it. A tunnel had been dug beneath the tower, with a trap door installed."

Ozpin set his coffee cup down on the desk to ask a question. "Could you locate this tower on a map?" Verdan sat back in his chair for a moment, considering the request. "Perhaps. I'm not sure. I could probably take you to it, though." Ozpin looked thoughtful for a moment before responding. "Then we shall send a mission to investigate this. You and your team will be a part of it."

Verdan frowned at a part of that last statement. "My team? My team is gone." Ozpin shook his head. "No, no. Your new team, team RWBY." Verdan crossed his arms. "They are not my team." Ozpin sighed under his breath before motioning for Verdan to finish his story.

"Let's see, I was. . . Oh, yes. I found the trap door, there was a bracket screwed into the floor holding a ladder up. The bracket was visible beside the trap door, that's how I found it. So I went down the ladder, the ranger following me. I found a tunnel, with signs of machine excavation on the walls. There were spotlights everywhere. I heard the ranger say something about me being in too deep, and when I turned around, he whacked me in the head with his shotgun. Looking back, I don't think he was actually a ranger. Could have been White Fang, he was a Faunus." Verdan breathed deeply, out of breath after talking without stopping.

Ozpin leaned his elbows on the desk. "Ms. Belladonna and Mr. Wukong told me you were in a cage, surrounded by blackness. Care to tell me how that happened?"

Verdan looked confused for a moment before speaking. "I'm. . . not quite sure, really. Like I said, the ranger knocked me out, and the next thing I knew, I was in that disorienting cage."

"Disorienting, how?" Ozpin asked Verdan.

"It was just, strange. There was no light coming into the cage, and nothing created light. Not my scroll, not my goggles, nothing. I couldn't even call using voice commands on the scroll. It said there was no signal. Time was strange, too. It felt like no time passed, even though in my head I knew it did. I never felt like I had to sleep, either. Knowing now that I spent a week in there, it's even weirder. And I couldn't feel movement, either. At least not until the very end."

"And what happened when the blackness ended?"

"I heard a cracking and shattering noise, and the blackness disappeared. I could see again, and I saw black crystals falling to the ground. I was hanging above a White Fang meeting, Blake busted me out, the mech started chasing us, and the rest you already know," Verdan finished.

"Black crystals, you say?" Ozpin asked, suddenly seeming much more intrigued than previously.

"Yes, black crystals," Verdan confirmed. "Is that important?"

"Nothing to worry about right now. I encourage you to go relax with your team, recover from this harrowing week."

And with that, the calm mood in the room shattered like a bullet meeting a mirror. Verdan stood up to leave as he loudly declared once more. "RWBY is not my team! My team is fractured and gone. Dead!"

The office was quiet for a moment as the two looked at each other, Ozpin with his always-present calm face and Verdan looking rather angry. "Do you know why Huntsmen trainees are assigned to teams, Mr. Allen?" Ozpin asked in a teacher-like tone.

"Yes. 'Hunters and Huntresses are assigned into four-person teams at the start of their schooling. This is designed to teach them the values of teamwork and reliance on others. While some missions are capable of being fulfilled by one person, many missions require multiple people. By learning to work in four-person teams, trainees are able to work together with any other Huntsman they encounter.' I'll admit, it's a textbook definition, but it works," Verdan finished, curious to see the point behind Ozpin's non sequitur..

"It does sound excessively formal, but you're essentially right. Teams teach the ability to rely on others. No one Huntsman can stand against everything, but working together they are more effective. Tell me, could you trust your teammates?"

"With my life!" Verdan snapped. "And they trusted me," he continued sadly, looking down. "They trusted me and I failed them." He looked up at Ozpin. "You wanna know why I don't want a new team?" he asked Ozpin, the anger in his voice and the water in his eyes conveying opposing emotions. "I don't want to kill them too! They trusted me with their lives, and I let them down. I don't want to that to happen again."

Ozpin's eyes narrowed slightly. "But you are letting them down. You said it yourself, teammates are supposed to be able to trust each other. Whether you like it or not, temporary or not, you are a part of team RWBY. They have to be able to rely on you," Ozpin said emphatically, "and right now, they cannot. In your effort to avoid the errors of the past, you are creating the same error in the future."

Verdan stared at Ozpin angrily, standing up. "No," he said coldy. "That will never happen." Verdan turned around and stormed into the elevator. Luckily, the door had remained open, otherwise his dramatic exit would not have worked. His mind seethed as he rode the elevator down. How dare he? I will not be responsible for anyone else's death! The elevator dinged as the doors opened, allowing Verdan to storm out of the elevator, not making an effort to avoid anyone in his way.

Verdan made his way to the back of the academy, embroiled in his own thoughts. When he reached a large tree, he climbed up it using his magnets. He reached a branch solid enough to hold his own weight and stopped climbing, instead perching upon the branch. He had always loved trees. Growing up in a desert town there were little trees, and what trees they did have were twisted and scraggly. When he attended Shade Academy, one of his favorite places was the greenhouses. Being around so much green growth had a calming effect on him, something he sorely needed right now.

It had been months since the incident. People had told him that the guilt and sorrow would pass, but it had not passed yet, and it did not appear to be going away anytime soon. People had tried to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, but how could it not be? The search was his idea. It was his plan that led them to split up, and part of the research that led them to the abandoned factory was his.

He sat in silence for a while, brooding on the past. He remembered the good times he had had with his team. He gave a rueful chuckle as he remembered his teammates' idiosyncrasies. Leo's extraordinary laziness, which he defended by quoting Newton's second law: objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Blaze incessantly trying to make bets with people, and trying to weasel her way out of them when she lost. Nicole, always causing issues with other people when she didn't use her internal filter or missed a social cue, which happened often.

Thinking about his old team, a thought popped into Verdan's head, inspiration into his denial of a new team. Yes, part of the reason he had been adverse to the idea of a new team had been what he had been saying, a refusal to be responsible for anyone else, a refusal to let anyone down. However, there was another reason, one that he was concealing from himself without realizing it: he did not want to replace his friends.

Verdan's team had fallen apart. Two had died and the third had returned to her home. Despite their true condition, he did not want to accept the fact that their team would never again exist. He wanted to preserve their memory, and not corrupt it or cover it with a new team.

He heard a rustling in the tree behind him. Looking behind himself, he saw someone clamber up the tree, carefully gripping each branch as she pulled herself up. As the young woman reached Verdan's level, she glanced up and made eye contact with Verdan, pausing for a moment. "Oh, hey. Didn't expect to see anyone else up here." She finished climbing up to Verdan's level, crouching on a nearby limb. "How'd you get up here? I've been climbing this tree for months, so I've gotten good at it, but I've never seen you up here before."

Verdan looked at her for a moment before turning away to face the Emerald Forest once more. After several seconds with no response, the girl opened her mouth to speak again. She stopped when she heard Verdan speak. "Magnetism. I created a magnetic field in the trunk. Magnets in my gloves and boots."

She waited for a moment, expecting Verdan to say more. When he didn't, she introduced herself. "Hi, my name's Maggie. What's yours?" After a moment, Verdan responded in kind. "Name's Verdan," he said.

"So," Maggie asked cheerfully. "How ya doin?" Verdan didn't answer, making Maggie curious. "Doing well?" she asked, poking him in the side slightly.

Verdan remained silent. He really didn't want to talk, but perhaps it would help? He sighed. "No, I'm really not." He interlocked his hands backwards in front of him, pushing out and popping his knuckles. "If you had made a serious mistake, if you had failed someone that trusted you, what would you do? You would do everything you could to avoid doing the same thing over again, right?"

Maggie thought for a moment before slowly nodding her head. "Course I would! If someone relied on me, I'da do my best to ensure that they could always trust on me. I don't wanna disappoint my friends."

"What if you made the same mistake by trying to avoid it? What would you do then?" Verdan asked, his voice starting to sound slightly shaky.

"So it's either screw up or maybe screw up?" Maggie asked, confused. Taking the lack of a response as an affirmation, she continued. "Why, I'd take the chance!" she exclaimed, slamming her fist down on her other palm. "I'd stop tryin' ta avoid the mistake, embrace the chance that it might happen. Avoid the inevitable! Choose to fight it!"

Verdan whirled around to face Maggie. "Even if taking the chance might let them die?" he asked sharply, tears in his eyes. "Even if they might die?" he repeated weakly.

"Course! If the price a' failure's death, I'd do all I could to avoid it! I'd think it'd be obvious!" Maggie exclaimed, starting to put together some of the pieces.

"But what if you weren't sure that one choice led to the inevitable? If you believed that choice actually had a better chance of avoiding failure!" Verdan asked loudly, getting worked up.

Maggie turned thoughtful for a moment, looking down. "Well now, that's a tough one. I guess I'd say it depends on how many think the one option leads to the inevitable, and how much ya trust 'em?"

"But, but, but," Verdan spluttered for a couple seconds before stopping and sighing. "I suppose you're right."

Maggie chuckled. "Shore enuff! Lis'en to Maggie, she'll steer ya right!" She stood up from her crouch. "Well, I'll be moseying along now. Seems you got a lot to occupy you." Maggie hopped down from branch to branch, descending to the ground.

Verdan thought for a moment then began chuckling. I'm an idiot, he thought. Don't know why it took someone else to tell me the same thing Ozpin did, but it did. He began planning his next course of action. I need to go apologize to Ozpin for storming off. I can also clear up the issue of my classes while I'm at it. Then I need to go apologize to RWBY. He looked up at the sky, a few stars beginning to become visible. Welp, no time like the present. Verdan began climbing down the tree, being careful so as to not fall and break himself. He made his way to Ozpin's tower, planning out what to say.

Verdan stood still as the elevator doors opened, revealing Ozpin concentrating intently on something on his desk. Verdan walked out and stood several feet in front of Ozpin's desk. After finishing up whatever he was working on, Ozpin looked up. "May I help you, Mr. Allen?"

Verdan took a deep breath and spoke. "I wish to apologize for my actions earlier, sir. I was out of line in storming off like I did, and I am sorry. I see your point now. I see that my previous plan was not going to bring what I wanted, and I am going to change that."

Ozpin slowly nodded at Verdan. "Apology accepted, young man. It takes character to admit when you're wrong, well done. Do you plan to apologize to team RWBY as well?"

"Yes sir, that's my next stop. I do have one question for you, though," Verdan said.

Ozpin responded, "Shoot."

"Can I be put in classes with trainees my own age?" Verdan asked. "I know I'm attached to a level-one team, but I want to be put in the same classes that I was taking in Shade. That way what I am learning will remain consistent."

"Of course you can," Ozpin said. "Since you asked, I will have that taken care of immediately."

"Thank you." Verdan turned to leave before a thought struck him while waiting for the elevator. "Is that all it takes? I just had to ask?" Ozpin gave no verbal response, just smirking slightly as he raised his coffee mug. Verdan shook his head. "I cannot believe you," he mumbled as he got on the elevator.

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Verdan knocked on the door to RWBY's dorm. He hoped they were in there. Everyone he had asked had not seen them, so the logical assumption was that they were in their dorm. He raised his hand to knock again just as the door opened. He nearly hit Blake in the head, stopping just in time.

"Verdan? Can we help you?" Blake asked in a puzzled voice, the other three in the room turning away from their own work to see what was happening at the door.

"Blake," Verdan began addressing the team. "Ruby, Weiss, Yang. I need to apologize for my actions over the past few weeks. I was a real heel and was an enormous jerk. There is no good explanation for my actions, I was just trying to protect you in a messed-up way, I suppose. I'm seriously sorry, though. I'm not going to be like that anymore. For the rest of the time that I'm here, I will try be a reliable teammate. It will take time for me to learn to trust you, but I will work with you for the duration of my attachment. Just one rule: I don't want to talk about my previous team right now." Verdan put his hands in his pockets, waiting for their verdict.

Predictably, Ruby was the first to react. "Yay!" she exclaimed, a slight sonic boom accompanying her Semblance-boosted dash towards Verdan, knocking him back several steps as she hugged him.

Blake patted Verdan on his shoulder slightly awkwardly. "It's fine."

Yang hopped off her bunk and Weiss stood up from her desk, the both of them approaching Verdan. Weiss was the first to speak, hands on her hips. "I will forgive you for now. Just know, I'm watching you. No slip ups, got it?"

Verdan nodded. "Got it," he said as he tried to extricate his arms from Ruby's grip, finally able to pry her off and set her aside.

"Y'know what? We're cool. You're forgiven," Yang said before she stepped uncomfortably close to Verdan. "Just know, you better not hurt my sister. Got it?"

"Yup, got it," Verdan said, nodding frantically as he backed up quickly. The five of them then entered the dorm, and returned to their work, satisfied that their interpersonal issues had been (mostly) solved.

ΩChapter EndΩ

AN: Sorry about this chapter coming a month after the previous one. I've discovered that time before graduation and work given to students are inversely related: as one goes down (time), the other goes up (work). That, and what I believe was what other people refer to as writer's block. But hey, here it is.

I'm not happy with this chapter, not at all. I don't like the content and I don't like the length. I feel like this chapter was actively fighting against me as I tried to write it. Well, here it is, in all its sad glory. The parts that I had the most trouble with are probably obvious, but if they're not, here they are: the part with Verdan realizing he is, indeed, at fault, and the part with him apologizing to team RWBY. Eventually, I decided to just do the best I could and get this chapter out, so I could keep going with the story.

Maggie's name was taken from "magenta". She was meant to have a Southern accent, but despite living in the middle of the South, I can't write a Southern accent to save my life. She's really just a character I created for this one part. However, if you guys want to see her again, maybe I'll bring her back.

Well, here ya go. Now I can work on the next chapter, which hopefully will be easier to write. See ya next time. God bless!