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I was seeing red, but maybe that was Mercury's blood in my eyes from when he had revealed himself to prevent me from warning Pyrrha about Emerald. They were going to make my friend kill my... other friend, and I wasn't going to let that happen. I barely registered my claws on my left hand tearing out his throat or the shocked expression on his face as I did so, I was already moving past him as he fell to the floor clutching his throat. The pain in my right hand from when I had tried to hamstring him earlier, only to discover he had prosthetic legs felt oddly muted. He had faked his injuries to make Yang look like a violent psycho! I didn't care if he survived, not right now, when I had other lives to save.
Using my Semblance, I burst through the doors, grateful the maintenance doors were built for easy opening in an emergency. Unfortunately, they were on the wrong side of the hard-light forcefield, and I didn't have Crescent Rose to get Pyrrha's attention. Luckily, my Semblance has a noticeable component to it, and if Pyrrha and Penny didn't see it, others would, and would hopefully draw the two combatants attention. Or at least my slamming into the shield would get noticed if all else failed.
As I activated my Semblance, something felt different than usual, and it took me a moment after I ended my Semblance to realize why. I had somehow gone through the shield! There would be time to figure out how later, as I could hear Professor Port demanding to know what I was doing. Focusing on Pyrrha, who looked disoriented, I called out, "Pyrrha, whatever you are seeing, it is an illusion! Emerald and Mercury never left Vale, they are trying to make you injure or kill Penny. Emerald is in the stands on the right side of the announcement booth causing you to see things that aren't there, just like she did to Yang and Coco! Mercury is bleeding out in the maintenance hallway after he tried to stop me from interfering! His legs are prosthetic, Yang never injured him, it was all a lie!"
That caused quite a commotion, as several AK-200s were moving towards where I said Emerald was, as well as towards me and likely some going to investigate the tunnels. But I didn't care, I had stopped the fight between Penny and Pyrrha, before anything bad happened. It was only when the androids led by an Atlesian soldier reached me that I noticed I was bleeding, and the shocked look on the the soldier's face was the last thing I saw before passing out.
So, it turns out that when Mercury shot my scroll, a piece of it cut me badly before I activated my Aura, and all that strenuous activity caused the wound to widen and bleed profusely rather than heal, since I wasn't Jaune. I didn't notice due to the adrenaline and rage affecting me at the time. Thankfully, it seems my nearly bleeding out in the arena did wonders for my credibility with the audience, according to Weiss. And it lead to Yang's name being cleared, though apparently her calling out the General for not performing even a basic investigation into Mercury's 'injuries' before disqualifying her had some claiming Yang was being ungrateful. Strangely, Ironwood himself was her biggest defender.
Mercury was dead, Emerald had been captured, but their other two teammates were MIA. The fact that they knew Penny was an android and seemed to have set up Pyrrha to somehow either kill or badly injure her with her Semblance meant that they had hacked Atlas security code somehow. With that revealed, Ironwood had recalled all AI machines and their control ships back to Atlas to be shut down and examined, but Roman Torchwick had somehow managed to escape before that order. Thankfully, Penny used different code custom designed exclusively for her, and wasn't connected to the wider Atlas military network. They would have to capture her to be able to reprogram her at this point.
Still, while I had been out, there had been a minor attack on the walls by Grimm, nothing the militia, Atlas soldiers, Huntsmen and senior students couldn't handle, but apparently the White Fang had tried to attack Beacon and somehow released Grimm into the school at the same time. There had been casualties among the staff and students until their leader Adam had run into her team and CFVY. Fox and Yatsuhashi had been forced to kill him to protect Blake, Yang and Velvet, who had all been injured fighting him before they, Coco and Weiss had arrived to help. Apparently he had planned to murder me in the hospital to torment Blake for breaking up with him and making a life without him, but they had been able to hold him off until help came thanks to Velvet.
Yang... She had provided the boys the opportunity to end Adam by trapping his sword in her own flesh and snapping it in half by sacrificing her right hand. The doctors said she is unlikely to regain more than 15% usability at best, and had suggested she get it amputated and replaced with a prosthetic hand if she wished to continue her Huntress training. Turns out Penny's dad was willing to custom build her one if she chose to go through with it. Blake seemed to be blaming herself for what happened to Yang, but, Sun, Velvet and Weiss had been able to convince her to visit Yang, who told her it wasn't her fault, that Adam was the one at fault, as well as Yang herself for not thinking about the consequences of her own actions.
I had actually been awake in my hospital bed during the later half of that conversation, and heard Yang admit she had developed a romantic attraction to Blake, but even if she hadn't, she would have done the same thing for her and the rest of their team. Nothing had come of that yet, but I felt awkward for overhearing without them knowing and planned to tell them both privately once I got a chance. For now, I had my own awkward situation to deal with, namely Penny having come to say goodbye before she returned to Atlas. With Cinder and Vitria still unaccounted for, her plan to stay at Beacon after the tournament had been delayed for now.
"So, I guess you'll be heading out tomorrow?" I asked Penny, even if I already knew the answer.
Penny looked quite sad, before putting on a happier face and replying. "Yes, unfortunately. Father and the General want to upgrade my body and install better protections on it before allowing me to venture outside Atlas again. I might not be able to return for some time, so I figured I should inform you that I am willing to wait on your answer until such a time as I can return. I do wish to stay in contact with you, though if you feel like that is too much pressure, I understand."
That final comment was what did it. I now knew what I had to say. "Penny, I have never been in a romantic relationship before. Yeah, I've been interested in having one, but I have never met anyone I would actually want to be in one with, not before I met you, at least. It took me awhile to figure that out, even after that game of spin the bottle we got dragged into that made us kiss. I spent some time on my Scroll trying to figure out myself the last few weeks, even before the tournament. I am only interested in the emotional aspects of the relationship, and not most of the physical aspects. Holding hands and hugs are about as far as I can go, at least right now."
"When we kissed, it felt weird to me, and I was afraid I might be repressing homophobia because of that. Thankfully, I now believe it was because I just wanted the emotional connection and didn't want you to get your hopes up. I felt like I was taking advantage of you, cause as naive as I can be, you are more so in a lot of ways. But if you can accept that, I would be happy to be your girlfriend."
I could see her processing what I had said. "Ruby, you are aware that I am not anatomically correct, right? I don't have the capacity for that kind of intimacy, at least not the receiving aspect. The emotional aspect is all I ever expected." Okay, yeah. I should have realized that, but emotions are confusing, and most of my knowledge about romance came from media that didn't really do how I felt all that great. Or at all most of the time. Come to think of it, a bunch of the media aimed at my age didn't differentiate between attraction and love, or even lust.
"Well, as much as I would like to give you a farewell hug, the doctors think I should avoid that for another 2 days. We can message each other later." The sad look begins to return to Penny's face, so I make a quick clarification. "Yang is awake and eavesdropping, we can figure out what we can and can't do when we don't have an audience. Besides, my sister and I have a few things we need to discuss in private anyways." The look of embarrassment on her face was adorable as she quickly stammered a goodbye to both of us before fleeing out the room.
"So, aside from you apparently only hiding your interest in Penny from yourself, what else do we need to talk about?" Asked Yang, not bothering to pretend she hadn't heard everything now that I had called her out.
"Honestly? Two things. The first being I overheard your conversation to Blake about your feelings for her. It was part of why I let you overhear the one I had with Penny. The second thing is that I killed Mercury, but I don't feel all that horrible about it." That was what really bothered me, that I didn't really feel much guilt at ending another person's life.
Yang was quiet for a moment. As I began to fear she condemned my actions, she spoke up. "You did what you had to do. I just wish you hadn't been forced to go through with it. Biologically speaking, you are still a minor, and yeah, being a trainee Huntress kinda muddies that a bit from a legal standpoint. But you are still my younger sister, the one I helped raise. I never wanted you to have to take a life, especially not so young, though I knew it was possible one day, thanks to uncle Qrow. You didn't murder him, Ruby, he was trying to trick one of your friends into murdering another, a premeditated move for some insane plan, likely linked to the attack on Beacon by the White Fang. They saw the scratch marks on his legs from when you tried to disable him, so anyone with a brain will accept that you tried to stop him nonlethally first. Unfortunately, there will likely be a few racists who will see Mercury's death as a Faunus getting away with pre-meditated revenge murder for disqualifying me. Don't listen to them, they would say the same thing even if there was clear video evidence against their claims."
I cried in relief, as losing Yang's trust and support would have devastated me. There were a lot of questions that still needed answering in the future, both personal and about whatever Cinder had planned, what she could have gained by framing Yang and Pyrrha as unstable psychopaths, and killing Penny, but they could wait for tomorrow. For now, I was happy to still have the people I cared about in my life.