ZONE 12 HEADQUARTERS, KINGDOM OF VALE

BLAKE

"Now, two questions for whoever can answer. One, my anti-rad. A blister pack of pills and a syrette. They were in my shoulder pouch, with a reserve supply in my pack. Where'd they go?"

I'm not sure what made him believe he had the authority to ask questions, but the fact that it was his gear we were inspecting gave us some responsibility to answer.

"Any pills or liquids in your pack were sent to the on-site labs for analysis. We weren't taking any chances with what you were carrying. Your second question?"

He raised an eyebrow at the information, before his expression changed to one I can best sum up as 'oh shit' and ducked back over to his pack. He frantically rifled through his pack for a few seconds before thumping the table.

"Something wrong?" The answer was obviously 'yes', but it warranted asking for comedy value alone.

"You took my vodka."

His response came in barely louder than a whisper. I doubted anyone but me heard it, but Yang's bemused laugh proved me wrong.

"Vodka? You're pissed we took vodka off you?"

He turned around, visibly angry that she was mocking his despair.

"Yes. I am pissed you took my vodka. More pissed about that than I am that you took my anti-rad. Anti-rad I can stock up on with the first military patrol I come across. Vodka is gold in the Zone. Yes, make whatever joke you please about drunken Slavs, but it's far and away the cheapest form of radiation treatment in the Zone and it doesn't taste like utter shit. If I find out that I'm down more than one bottle…"

Yang took the threat in stride, walking up to Taltos and clapping him on the shoulder. "I'll top you off from my stash. Because if you try anything, I'll break you in half."

He looked down at her - they had about 5 inches of height separating them - and opened his mouth to say something when he thought better of it, or so it seemed. Yang had that effect on people.

"I'll take that as a 'yes Yang, I won't do anything that'll make you want to beat me'. Now, I need to go save your booze from being pulled apart by the lab techs." Her hand slipped off his shoulder as she turned and left the armory. "Tell me if he does anything stupid, 'kay?"

"Will do. I get first call on punishment, he's got a 'catgirl' remark to pay for."

I didn't have any plans to follow up on that, it was more hazing on my part; entertaining hazing, as it drew a sympathetic wince from Weiss and an audible shiver from Yang.

"Should I get a cleaning crew ready?"

"We're twenty meters from the infirmary, Yang. I'll take him there before I do anything to hurt him."

Taltos gave me a tired look before nodding at Ruby. "Didn't Ruby say she was going to handle any more of that?"

I shrugged nonchalantly. This was something else I could weave into my messing with him. "Ruby's been fighting Grimm since she was fifteen. I've been fighting since I was younger than that. She couldn't stop me if I wanted to hurt you."

I glanced at Ruby, hoping that she'd play along, but she didn't seem to be following my story.

"I said I would be taking care of any issues, Blake, and I will. Aren't you supposed to be a good representation of Faunus anyway?"

"Discussion for another time, Ruby." She was right; ever since I stopped hiding the fact I was a Faunus, I knew my actions were being judged as more than just my own. The second curse of being a Faunus in human society.

I turned my head back to Taltos and saw that he'd picked up on the message Ruby gave. He offered me a smile with a vague hint of sympathy behind it; a gesture I didn't particularly want, but accepted all the same. "So, you're the token minority on your team?"

"A crude way of putting it." With a single sentence, the spotlight was on my history. Wonderful.

"How would you put it?"

"Team RWBY's sole Faunus representative."

"Sounds very political. You ever tried to get into politics?"

"Once."

I wouldn't have called the White Fang 'political', but it was the closest I came to actually changing things, for better or worse.

His eyes narrowed as he turned back around to his pack. "Not big on talking, are you?"

"I say what's needed."

"She talks a lot more when it's just us; I don't think she's okay with talking to you."

He snorted as he picked up one of his weapons - an archaic automatic rifle design - and checked the magazine. "Smart girl. She knows how to approach new people. Not too harsh, not too friendly. Just cold. She'll do well in the Zone."

"If you're looking for cold, well, there's Weiss. She's the 'Ice Queen' for a reason."

I looked over at where Weiss was standing, only to see that she was half-leaned against the table, asleep. I thought about breaking out my scroll and taking a photo for blackmail, but decided against it. Ruby'd be asking Weiss more than enough questions about why she was sleeping to make her regret it.

"She's the white one, right? Because she's asleep. Not very frosty."

Ruby glanced over to Weiss and saw the same sight I did. Instead of annoyed, Ruby seemed more exasperated that Weiss had fallen asleep. Our focus soon shifted from the fact that Weiss was asleep - a noteworthy event of itself, considering we had company - to the object Weiss was holding; the 'artifact' that Taltos had given her to counteract 'radiation poisoning'.

The first thought to cross my mind was that the object Taltos had given her had something to do with her current state. The second was that if he'd harmed Weiss in any way, Yang was going to be working with much less of him than I would. The first reaction was me darting over to take the thing out of her hands and check her breathing and pulse.

The 'artifact' was warm, almost body temperature, but hadn't done anything to Weiss that I could see. Her breathing and pulse were both normal, there were no signs of injury on her; for all intents and purposes, she'd dozed off with a warm rock. I wheeled around to Taltos, one hand already going for Gambol Shroud on my back.

"I'm giving you five seconds to explain what you did to Weiss. Talk."

He plucked the rock from my hands, brushing the spot where I'd grabbed it before placing it in his pack.

"Natural side-effect of radiation being drained from the body. The artifacts aren't alive, they don't know to look for the bad radiation, so it goes for all kinds, including radiation naturally emitted through the miracle of existence. Of course, that makes people a little tired, so they fall asleep. She must've been quite tired, because I've seen stalkers about as old as she looks hold one of these things for hours without slowing down."

"So she's not injured?" I wanted exact words, not implications.

"Unless she needs radiation to survive, she's fine."

I kept my focus on him; even if he was telling the truth, I didn't want him to try anything else. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ruby trying to shake Weiss awake, with predictable results. However, what caught my attention more was Taltos reaching for a pistol on the table behind him.

"Hands away from the weapons."

He ignored me and picked up the pistol, pulling back the slide and smiling.

"Put the pistol back on the table." I slid Gambol Shroud out of its sheath and pointed it at him.

"Relax. You want your friend to wake up. I have yet to find someone who hasn't woken up from gunfire."

I twisted the blade against his throat. He was going to put that pistol down if he wanted to live.

"Pistol. Down. Now. Last warning."

He raised his left hand in surrender, while his right slid the pistol into a drop holster on his leg. I kept my weapon on him until that hand came up as well. He might not have put the gun back on the table, but he wouldn't be fast enough to draw before I could do anything.

"It's away. I like having a sidearm, so I'm going to decline putting it on the table, if that's alright by you?"

I scowled at him, but took Gambol Shroud off his neck. He had done what I asked, even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted. That being said, he had a point about gunfire being a universal wake-up call. I flicked the blade down, unlocking the pistol that made up Gambol Shroud's hilt, and fired a short burst into the air.

Weiss shot awake, her hand darting to her sword, while her eyes scanned the room. I replaced the magazine in Gambol Shroud before flicking the blade back into place and sheathing it.

"Sleep well?"

Weiss' eyes locked onto mine and I could tell she was fighting the urge to insult me for interrupting her rest. Her self-control seemed to win out, because she just pushed Ruby away as she stood up, without saying a word.

That's not to say everyone was quiet, as Taltos seemed rather intrigued by Gambol Shroud.

"Your sword is also a gun?"

"Yes, it is. Ruby's scythe is also a gun. Yang's bracelets are also guns. Weiss' sword has a chamber capable of switching Dust in it. You don't have variable-function weaponry where you're from?"

That was a rhetorical question; I had already gathered that weapons like ours, if they even existed in his world, were not the most common of objects. Suffice to say, that gave us a considerable advantage over the residents of the Zone in that regard.

"Underslung grenade launchers and shotguns. We don't have 'look at my sword - oh, look at that - now it's a gun' kind of weapons. There's no point to it."

"I beg to differ, Tal. I think you'll find there's a lot of point to some of them."

Trust Yang to come back with some wordplay.

"Got your vodka back, by the way. Plus one from me."

She walked past me with a backpack, full of glass by the clinking it made as she walked, and placed it on the table by Taltos' pack. He wasted no time opening the pack and counting out the bottles inside, a curt 'thanks' escaping him before he started.

I listened to him counting, but he didn't sound like he was saying anything in Valish. I heard from Ruby that he called her 'pirosharatou' or something to that effect, so I presume it must have belonged to the same language.

He smiled and nodded as he finished his counting, turning back to us with a satisfied smile on his face.

"That's all in order. Second question was 'what to I have to do to get a drink', but I think that solved itself just now."

He pulled a couple of tin cups from inside his pack and cracked one of the bottles. "Anyone else want a drink? Right now I'm pouring for me and Sleeping Beauty over there, but the more the merrier."

Pouring alcohol for Weiss was a mistake; one particularly amusing night demonstrated that she was an incredible lightweight when it came to drinking. If we were still at Beacon, we might have let the offer pass as drunk Weiss is always an entertaining sight, but we weren't, so Yang stepped in.

"The Ice Queen's not so great with drinks, Tal, so I'll take the shot for her."

Taltos stopped pouring, glancing over at Weiss for a few seconds.

"That lightweight?"

"You remember that vodka's pretty hard as far as alcohol goes, right? She gets blackout off one beer. Vodka would destroy her."

Taltos' eyes widened in surprise and he put the bottle down. "Really? Jesus. Alright, that complicates things over there. Hope she's fine with needles."

He picked the bottle back up and filled the cups, placing the top back on the bottle before picking one of the cups up and offering it to Yang. When she took the cup, he picked up the remaining one and raised it.

"Vashe zdorov'ye. To our health."

He brought the cup to his lips and drained it in one swig, placing the cup upside down on the table as he nodded to Yang. "Change of heart on the drink?"

She swirled the drink, staring into it in a way that told me she was uncertain about something. To her credit, she hid it well enough that you couldn't notice it unless you knew her incredibly well.

She looked back up, her ever-present smile dispelling any illusions of doubt. "Nope. Just used to drinking from a glass. Cheers." She raised her cup in imitation of Taltos and drained it, slamming it back on the table with more fervor than he had.

As Taltos packed away his things, Ruby's scroll beeped with a message. She checked it, giving us the information inside.

"We've got an incoming Bullhead. Looks like we can get going soon, if that's our replacements. Oh, and they've got two 'unplanned passengers'. Blake? Weiss? You have any guesses about who these guys might be?"

I'm not sure why Ruby jumped to me and Weiss for 'who knows about surprise visitors', but it made sense in hindsight. My past always seemed to be the one coming back to bite us while we were in our early days at Beacon, while Weiss was the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company; I can't see anyone on their boards, least of all her father, agreeing to let her go on a potentially one-way trip, regardless of whether or not she had a sister that could fill the role.

"No, I can't think of anyone that'd know. Sun's team's in Mistral, so it can't be him. Adam and I… we said our goodbyes. Weiss?"

"The Company's got friends in high places, but I doubt Professor Goodwitch would tell them about this. Even if she did, there's no Bullheads that could get here from Atlas in under an hour."

"Local rep?"

"My father wouldn't leave something like this up to anyone but himself. Possibly Winter, if he was incredibly busy. They're both in Atlas, so it's not anyone coming for me."

Yang strolled over to the armory door, a bit more of a spring in her step than before. "Then it's two random people that we have no idea about. Not everyday that happens, so let's go see who it is."

Ruby and Weiss both looked at Taltos, as he was still making sure he wasn't missing anything. I knew why they were looking; they didn't want to leave him unsupervised in a place full of weapons and ammunition. Sensible concerns.

"I'll stay here and make sure he doesn't touch anything he's not supposed to. You three can go out and be the welcoming party, and I'll join you when he's done."

They nodded and left the armory, leaving me alone with Taltos. Normally, I'd be looking to question him about the Zone, but there were more pressing matters, namely the two 'unplanned passengers' on the Bullhead. Personal experience told me that 'unplanned passengers' were normally high-priority individuals: high-ranking military commanders, politicians, relevant Hunters. If it was a flight to a classified base, you might have prisoners on that list as well. The question on my mind was which of those categories the two passengers would fit in.

A/N: Hey all!

This chapter's pretty weak, all told, but that's why there's two going up today. Consider it my way of saying 'sorry' to any RWBY fans who didn't think I handled Blake's mind well.

For you S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans, I have this: 'Chiki Briki soon'. It might not be all you were hoping for, but it's not the last time I'll use it either.

Thank you to Challos for editing, as always.

See you next week for Chapter 5!