Nanosuit and Soul Magic: A Crysis/RWBY crossover

chapter 24

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The girls are heading back to their dorm building. I reach them before they get more than halfway there, and fall in step. They don’t acknowledge me. The few hours of sleep they got evidently weren’t enough, the adrenaline’s long gone, and all four of them look absolutely exhausted.

After a few seconds, Yang raises her head enough to look at me. “So...” She stifled a yawn. “What’ve you been up to?”

“Experiments in applied energistics.”

A blank look.

“I got Velvet to activate some Lightning Dust, which I then shoved into my chest for a powerup.”

Weiss looked like she was about to say something, but only sighed and shook her head. We all resumed walking in silence. This whole time, Ruby’d ignored me. Well, time for the fun part of this little conversation.

“Hey, Ruby? Can I talk to you for a second?”

She looks over to me, wearily, but doesn’t say anything. She evidently remembers our last little talk from early this morning, and is as reluctant to continue it as I was. Hopefully this will be a pleasant surprise.

“I’ve been thinking, and you have a point. Not having to kill everyone we fight...well, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to kill anyone we fight. This ain’t a perfect world, but if we can come up with a workaround that doesn’t hurt our odds...hell, I’ll give it a shot.”

Ruby’s eyes widen in surprise. “R-really?”

“Yeah. I’ve even gotten in touch with Penny’s dad. If we come up with something that works, he’ll fund and produce it. I’ve already got a few ideas, but I think I’ll need some help developing-”

I don’t get to finish my sentence, because Ruby tackle-hugs me.

Ah, good, she’s back to normal. Sort of.

“I knew it! I knew you’d do the right thing!”

I gently pried her off. “Don’t think I just pulled a complete heel-face turn here. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get all of you girls through anything that happens, I’ll just consider less...drastic options. If possible.”

Ruby’s exuberance fades. “If possible, huh?” She sets her jaw, determination evident on her features. “Then we’re just going to have to be strong enough to make sure that we don’t ever have to resort to killing.”

Ah, crap. On the plus side, she’s forgiven me surprisingly quickly. The cost, though, is that she’s putting the pressure on herself, here. This adorable, self-sacrificing kitten of a human being is her own worst enemy.

I give her a light push back towards her team. “We’ll work on this after you guys get some rest. What are you guys planning for the rest of the day?”

“They’ll have the fair grounds set up in a few hours.” Blake said. “We’re going to go have a look with our friends in Team Juniper.”

“I have no idea who those people are.”

Ruby cocked her head to the side. “But, they live right across the hall from us. You really haven’t met them?”

I shake my head. “You may have noticed that I’m not exactly a people person. The only student here I’ve really interacted with aside from you guys is Velvet, and that’s probably only because I left a good first impression.”

“Oh. Well, since you’re going to be following us whether we want you to or not, I guess you can just meet them late-” Ruby was interrupted by another loud yawn from Yang.