Chapter 5: Widow's Other, Glowing, Self

"Oh, Mark… take me!" I mumbled in my sleep, too wrapped up in my wonderful dreams to care if anyone could hear me.

A wonderful scene was painted across my mind. Long, romantic hallways for me and Mark to run toward each other in, fields and fields of thorn-less roses for us to skip through and fall down over each other and… and…

A small nosebleed affected me in that moment, causing my body to jerk awake. I blinked my eyes rapidly, taking in my surroundings quickly.

'Damn, I was so close to the climax that time... another time, I suppose.'

Mark, the man I dream for, sat at the desk across the room, no doubt doing paperwork for those creeps up on the ship. I mean, they only ever check out Spade… and she always initiates it. It's still weird!

Jack was sitting nearby Mark, fiddling with some kind of communications device. Not many people use the tablet style comm-decks, most of us have swapped to eye holos. Then again, this place is pretty ass-backwards in terms of technological advancement. From what Ruby told me, they have plenty of high quality weaponry, but transportation has been stuck in the same way forever. Of course, VTOLs aren't exactly the most primitive form of transportation. Would love to get a carrier down here to show that girl.

I shook my head of any weird thoughts that might be forming in the dark recesses of my mind. Not healthy to get involved with a colony girl, who knows what diseases they have. Not to mention the difficulty of a pilot/baseline relationship. It'll be fine to talk to her though. Probably.

A glance revealed Spade in her bed, wrapped up in the room's curtains. Her face had a smug sleepy smile, as usual. She's a real smooth bitch, in my opinion. Always acting vulnerable so that people will give her shit. It pisses me off.

Couldn't see Graves around. She must have headed out to find the DSC before something really bad could happen. We should bring that thing along more often, it is freaking hilarious.

A cold sweat afflicted me when I turned to Melrin's bed. The empty bed that had contained the psychopath was instead filled with satchel charges, burn cards, and a sidewinder. That made me feel a bit better, but Melrin on the loose is nothing to sneeze at. Especially if he still has his damn spitfire.

Mark must have heard me when I hopped off the bed with a small grunt. He greeted me without turning toward me. That paperwork must be pretty annoying to ignore me.

"Morning, Widow."

"Morning, Mark. Jack."

Jack looked up from his device toward me to return my greeting. I was greeted by a smile turned head tilt and a confused look instead. After a second he vocalized his thoughts to us.

"Widow, you are glowing."

"Huh?" I looked down at my arms, but they seemed normal, if a little yellow. It's probably the planet's atmosphere acting on my skin. This stuff happens every time we go to a new world.

"You are glowing yellow."

"What are you talking about, Jack?" Mark looked up from his paperwork to address the quiet man seated beside him.

"Just look at her."

"Alright. Widow, you decent?"

"Uh, yeah… I just woke up." I turned my head confusedly to Jack as Mark rotated his body to look at the supposed glowing of my body. His eyes grew wide as he looked on my half-armored body. I mean, I had my underclothes on, plus a few armor pieces that I had fallen asleep in, but it was still weird to be looked at that way.

"Yep."

"Yep what?"

"You are definitely glowing, Widow."

"Huh? Is that a euphemism or something?"

"No, you are literally glowing."

"I'll request again, huh?" The ridiculousness of these statements of glowing must have been showing on my face, cause Mark got out of his chair to make sure I was okay. I think he was going to at least, until he stopped near me and started to look rapidly back and forth from my bed to me. I raised an eyebrow at his actions, and turned to see what was so freaky on my bed.

It's not every morning that you wake up and find that your body is still asleep. Not in the 'ah, crap my arms are asleep and shit' way, but in the out of body experience way. I refuse to say I panicked at the sight of my body lying on the bed, not moving. I might have screamed a bit, but that has no bearing on my stature as a pilot. Lots of pilots scream when they see their own faces. I don't know any of them, but they exist!

Whatever was happening must have been a terrible dream. I rapidly faded into the pre-wakeup blackness, my senses fading too quickly to be real life.

My eyes shot open at the sound of a nearby scream. It had sounded like it was right next to my bed. Quickly my mind went into combat mode, eyes sweeping across the area in the room for the hostiles. Instead I was met with a trio of terrified teammates.

"Widow? You ok?" Mark desperately tried to conceal the worry in his voice as he addressed me.

"Yeah… why? What happened?"

"Well, let's see," Jack spoke up from his position beside the desk, "first you were glowing, then there were two of you, then your other self screamed, and now we are here."

"Wait, what? That wasn't just a weird dream?"

"Apparently not, Spider-girl." Spade's voice cut across the room, tired and angry at what had woken her. I'm not eager to know why, but she sat up while holding the curtains in a way that hid her body from the chest down. "Now, would you lot please shove it for a bit? Some of us are trying to get some beauty sleep."

Bitch.

"I heard that!" Spade grumbled as she rolled back into her curtain.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the other pair of worried eyes.

"So… what should we do about this?"

"First we run through the normal questions. Have you ingested any local foods and/or drinks since arriving?"

"No. Speaking of which, I'm hungry."

"Jack, toss me a field-bar." Mark handed the energy and nutrient rich ration to me and continued. "Have you come into contact with any unfamiliar or possibly radioactive materials since arriving?"

"Don't think so. Unless you count Ruby's scythe… thing."

"I'll make a note of it. Now then, are you aware of any pathogens in your body you may have contracted since arriving?"

"Not that the body monitor can sense."

"Hm, weird. We are going to bring this to the head bastard of this place."

"I'll get dressed."

Ozpin sipped at his morning drink and chuckled at the scene playing out on his scroll. His early morning amusement was interrupted by a beeping on the device, signaling a request to enter his office by someone without proper authority to enter. He sighed, shutting off the video feed of the Beacon cliffs and switching to the camera outside the elevator to his office. An eyebrow was raised when he saw the ones wishing to gain entrance.

Standing outside the elevator was the group of otherworldly invaders to his… relatively peaceful planet. Only two of them were missing, the psychopath and his 'friend,' although these people were no doubt much more reasonable and levelheaded than the others. A quick flick of the wrist and the door to his office slid open in expectation for the soldiers.

Calmly standing up to the side of his desk to access the drink maker he had installed, he prepared four mugs of fresh ground Valen coffee. The mugs were specially made for the teachers of Beacon, tempered by intense flame dust, and imbued with earth dust in order to keep the drinks inside at the perfect temperatures. They hadn't cost as much as one would think, the company that made them had been in debt to Beacon and decided to offer the mugs as payment. Beacon accepted, and never looked back on that particular gift.

The four soldiers shuffled into the room, their faces serious and worried at something they wanted to discuss. With the exception of one of the women, who excitedly ran to the robot standing in the corner of the room. The rest took a seat in the chairs placed in front of Ozpin's desk, put there earlier that morning. Ozpin gazed at the trio with a curious look.

The quiet one on the left had a passive look on his face, but the slight twitching of his mouth and brow displayed his worry clear as day. The woman, seated on the right, fidgeted and rubbed her hands, doing a poor job of hiding her emotions. The man seated at the center, Ellis, had an angry and determined face on, but subtle twitching, much like his partner's, gave away his true emotion. Ozpin set his mug onto his desk and sat down to address the three.

"How may I help you and your friends, Mr. Ellis?"

"We need answers."

"About what, if I may inquire?"

The quiet one, Jack, spoke up in response.

"Our friend woke up glowing and in a second body."

"…Pardon?" Ozpin's face, normally stoic and composed, faltered in confusion at Jack's statement.

"Widow here," Ellis gestured to the woman to his left, "Woke up glowing yellow. She says that she felt like it was her own body, but her body was still in the bed. What we want to know is what did you do to us in our sleep?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"It is the truth, and if you cannot accept that, please escort yourself out of my office."

"As soon as you tell us what is wrong with Widow."

Ozpin looked over the woman Ellis called Widow. A cursory glance revealed no major defects, according to his knowledge of anatomy. Face had all of the bones it needed, muscles toned and strong, good skeletal stature. Ozpin squinted at a slight change in the woman's eyes, a flicker of yellow among the blue orbs.

"Hm."

"'Hm'? What kind of 'hm' are we talking about?" Widow's voice was filled with fear at Ozpin's nonchalant answer to the question.

"Follow me." Ozpin rose from his seat and started toward the elevator. The pilots followed reluctantly.

We followed Ozpin down the hallways to what I assumed was going to be a medical professional's office. He wouldn't answer any of Mark's questions, merely responding with an even brisker pace. After a few minutes we stopped in front of another door, almost identical to the one to Ozpin's office. We all gave him strange looks, but he simply waved the dark grey tablet device in front of the door, causing it to open.

The room we piled into could be described as a pigsty, if they actually have pigs on this damn planet. Each of us pilots drew our own conclusions as to what the room was for, no doubt. Personally, it looked like my old college dorm room during finals week. Papers were strewn about, some tacked onto the walls, others in massive stacks under prominent signs marking the topic they were related to. Some of the labeled stacks had simple names, like chemistry or ancient history, but many more had strange names, like 'The Mating and Reproductive Process of Beowolves,' or 'Dust Application in Recent History'.' A thermos and several mugs of what was most likely coffee lay around the room, most half drunk or empty from some other force.

Whoever lives here must be a teacher.

"Quite right, my dear!" an unfamiliar voice, much more energetic than Ozpin's, exclaimed in pride. I really need to stop thinking out loud. "That you do."

A green-topped blur ran past us into the room, stopping in front of Ozpin and fixing its glasses as it did. The 'it' in question was a man, thin but obviously tougher than the average person. Ozpin pushed his glasses up on his face and turned to us.

"This is one of the teachers of Beacon Academy, Bartholomew Oobleck. He is the head of the history department, and we are here for him to help us with 'Widow's… 'problem'."

"…" Jack looked incredulously at the speedy history teacher, a feeling I very willingly shared.

"And how is a history teacher going to help us?" Mark asked Ozpin. "I'm pretty sure what we need is a doctor, if you people even have doctors."

"We do have doctors, but this 'problem' requires the assistance of a man invested in the history of this world."

"I agree with Mark, how is a history teacher going to help." Jack seemed to have found his voice, allowing him to express his confusion at Ozpin's statement.

"It is very simple, friends!" Oobleck seemed far too excited for the situation at hand, his mouth spouting off words at an incredible speed. "I have been doing and collecting research from all over on the nature of Aura and the connections it has with Dust, and I have compiled as much of the research as I could in this very room! I only need to ask Widow here," he was behind me suddenly, pointing to my eyes for some reason, "a few questions. Do you accept, Miss Widow?"

"Uh, sure?"

"Wonderful! First question, have you interacted with any amount of Dust since arriving here on Remnant?" He was behind his desk in an instant, scrambling around before triumphantly raising a notepad and pencil above the mess.

"Melrin had a small pouch, but I never touched it. There was also Ruby's gun, but does that count as, uh, Dust?"

"Most likely, as our guns use ammunition made with Dust, and Miss Rose's rifle was no doubt covered in powdered Dust from firing her weapon, or at least the firing mechanism was. Did you interact with the ammunition in any way?"

"She let me hold a few bullets, but that's it."

"Fascinating. Now then, would one of you gentlemen please describe the state of Miss Widow's other body when she was in it?"

"It was glowing yellow and had a slight transparency to it. Other than that, it seemed normal."

"Yes, I see. Miss Widow, what do you believe caused this other body to materialize?"

"Well, I had a nosebleed when I woke up."

"And you believe this to be the cause?"

"I'm not sure what caused it, but I don't think it was the nosebleed."

"Hm, yes. Pardon me one second." Oobleck dived back into the stacks of papers around the room, emerging moments later clutching one of the smaller stacks. He quickly flipped through the papers, which were most likely part of his research. The research was flung over his shoulder, landing perfectly on another stack of papers, while Oobleck dashed, faster than any of us could see, and stopped right in front of me. His squinting eyes looked deep into mine, but not in the romantic way. Oobleck's eyes were intent on research. His eyes suddenly widened at something in mine, and he dashed back to Ozpin's side, whispering something unintelligible to him.

Ozpin nodded to Oobleck's statement, and the hyperactive history teacher turned toward us. Specifically me.

"Congratulations, Miss Widow! You are the first person not born on Remnant to unlock their Aura and discover their Semblance!"

We three pilots looked in confusion and disbelief at the pair across the room, hundreds of questions running through our heads, but only one was vocalized simultaneously by us. Each of us had a different meaning, but what we said would suffice for now.

"What."

A/N Sorry this is late, this chapter just didn't want to get written. Also, I've been playing Evolve. And writing new chapters for my other fics. I'm gonna try and get one chapter of Grimmfall out per week, and the other stuff will get chapters whenever I can.

Speaking of other stuff: We Looked has chapter 2 in the works, a bit of bumblebee for those of you who ship it; I finally wrote the beginning of Crimson Snowflake; working on a Evolve/RWBY fic with the help of LeviathanTamer; and I am working on a fictionalization of Evolve's Lazarus' backstory. Lots to look forward to.

I got recruited by LeviathanTamer to beta his Evolve/RWBY fic, RWBY's Little Monster, so if you want a pretty good story with plenty of monster versus grimm combat, go check that out. No, seriously.

Thanks to JackThePegasus for being my beta and an awesome guy. [*blush*]

Review, Follow, Fave, Potato. See you later!

PS I'm fairly sure my beta is British.

E/N Well. I've got my own space now. That's cool. I'm enjoying the pilot characters, and we're definitely getting to know them better - that's always a good thing. Also, did she unlock her aura by having what is basically a wet dream…? In fact, nevermind. Awesome chapter, I r8 8/8 m8.