Chapter Text
Chapter 1 Setting the stage
Ruby was hungry, her stomach ached with emptiness, her thirst for blood begging to be quenched. It was the middle of the night, and she was on her second to last bag of substitute blood. She pierced it with her fangs, drinking the life giving fluid, enjoying the taste as she slurped the iron tasting liquid, which she quickly finished, satiating her thirst for now. She didn’t have the means to create any more as her home where she had the equipment and ingredients to make it had burnt to the ground, turning her mama’s work to ash, one of the few things she had of her mother, gone just like that. She was in a simple combination of a red t-shirt and a black knee length skirt. She was also wearing a red cloak and cape, one her mama said suited her. She had a cross necklace around her neck, one she promised that she would never take off. She also had a backpack that had everything she managed to grab before her home burnt to the ground. It had her wallet, some clothes, the recipe for substitute blood and a couple of pictures of her and her family.
Her cat, and her only family left looked at her with concern, sitting on a nearby crate in the alley the two vampires were in, her tail swishing back and forth. Her cat was named Molly, she was a ginger cat with bright red eyes, the same colour as freshly spilled blood. Ruby had similar red eyes, but hers had speckles of silver visible in her blood red pools, somehow her eye colour from when she was human didn’t fully disappear. “I’m okay,” Ruby said to her fellow bloodfiend. Molly didn’t look very convinced, her eyes showing her concern. “I will be, I know how to make the substitute blood.... I just need equipment and ingredients and then things will be fine.” she said, trying to convince herself and not really succeeding.
“Meow.” Molly said, very concerned for her fellow kindred.
“I know I know. We need to find a place to live.” Ruby said tossing the empty blood bag in a nearby trash can. “You have any idea where a fifteen year old girl and a cat could find a place to live in Vale?” she asked hoping the cat had a better idea how the housing situation was like in the kingdom. The cat’s dry look was answer enough. “Yeah I’m not sure why I asked.” Ruby said with an awkward laugh.
She brushed herself off. “Nothing to it, we need to get moving, come on Molly.” Ruby said with a sigh.
Molly leapt off her current perched and jumped up to Ruby’s shoulder.
“Let’s hope we can find a place soon.” Ruby needed to get the equipment and ingredients soon as possible. Otherwise she would be a blood hungry monster, that would blindly lash out until someone could kill her.
Ruby and her cat, under the light of the shattered moon, began their new journey hoping they would find answers to questions they held.
- - - -
Weiss Schnee was getting ready for Beacon, making sure that she had everything she needed, and that her bags were packed and ready to go. This time tomorrow she would be readying herself for initiation and begin her path to becoming a hunter of grimm.
Once she was happy with how things were done, she lay back on her bed, praying for sleep to take her into its peaceful embrace, for her to sleep without the nightmares that have been haunting her for as long as she could remember.
She would dream of the pile of corpses, all of them bearing her face looking at her with unanswered pleas and lifeless gazes. The failures, the ones discarded for not succeeding. She dreamed of it growing body by body each and every night. All of them dying in uniquely horribly ways.
She would dream of a basement that didn’t exist. Where a golden tree had taken root. Where the mirrors reflected infinitely, like a kaleidoscope of dreams and possibilities. She dreamt of pain, of suffering she could scarcely comprehend.
She sighed, and tried to close her eyes.
Unfortunately, despite her prayers, under the watchful gaze of the shattered moon, Weiss would once more suffer the same nightmares she always did.
- - - -
Blake Belladonna was in a crappy motel wondering how her life turned out like this. She was the only survivor of the Vale White Fang, the rest all killed in a bloody massacre she was lucky to avoid, she was out for revenge for whoever was responsible, and she was about to become a member of Beacon’s student body, all because of some stranger saying she should. “If you head to Beacon,” the strange person said, voice full of promise, “you will find the people who did this to you,” the person smiled, teeth bared, “and you can have the revenge you so desperately crave.” She agreed and took the stranger’s outstretched hand. Blake, desperate and afraid, could imagine chains binding her to whatever she had just agreed to.
She stared out the window, feeling very lost, “what is going on?” she asked, not expecting an answer from anyone.
The moon didn’t answer her. Nor did she want it to.
Soon she had to go to sleep, she had a long day ahead of her tomorrow and she would need her sleep.
- - - -
Yang Xiao Long was currently riding in her motorcycle, enjoying the late night air rushing over her. She didn’t really have a destination at the moment, content to just ride around Vale for a bit before she had to go back home. It helped her avoid thinking
Not that she or her mom really could consider that place home any more, too many bad memories for the both of them. Flashes of the massacre she and her mom had come back home to, her dad ripped to pieces, scarcely enough left to recognise him. Blood coating every surface of the house, and most frightfully of all, Ruby her baby sister, gone without a trace.
Someone had kidnapped her baby sister and Yang was going to kill whoever did that to her family.
She and her mom Summer had searched for years, they were still searching even to this day, holding on to hope that Ruby was alive somewhere out there.
She heard the sound of shattering glass coming down the street, frowning Yang turned her bike down the street she had heard the sound coming from, she was glad she was armed, as she came across a whole bunch of goons robbing a dust store.
The front window was shattered, someone having been thrown through it. A man lay there covered in blood, groaning on the floor. “Sorry!” Yang could hear a young voice cry out.
Yang, bringing her bike to a stop, got Ember Cecilia ready. Cocked and loaded she walked through the broken down door and was greeted with a store that looked like a tornado had ran hog wild through it.