Girls On Fire {an RWBY Novel}

Three: Rebel Girl

I look over, and Ruby is asleep. Her slight, pointed chin is tilted up as she rests her head against the wallpaper, and her dark eyelashes fall down over her face like a small forest canopy. She is the type of girl that Mother would have chosen for a modeling shoot, something that would gentrify alternative subcultures. Rebel women as the face of a campaign, with this girl front and center, sporting her chopped up black and red hair, her eyeliner that had just slightly too large of wings to be considered average sizes. I could tell, from the bumpy lines of black around her eyes, that she did her makeup herself, and that she wasn't particularly good at it (no wonder nobody was talking to her.) But it managed, maybe more than anything else, to suggest a sense of nonconformity, a willingness to not fit in, even if not fitting in was exactly the sort of thing that made her anxious. Overall I saw that she was beautiful, the way a warrior is beautiful. Some part of me could see her playing a siren, singing her rock music songs and taking down all the men who dared look her way. Though her build might be small, something about her suggested that what was inside of her was much larger than what normal people had. She was almost overwhelming to look at.

It's not really polite to fall asleep at parties, especially your father's engagement party (I could recall, after her mention of Taiyang, Mother's brief explanation of this particular parties purpose. Ruby's father was actually quite irrelevant, Mother was more focused on pleasing his fiancée, some woman who'd recently taken over one of the country's more prestigious schools.) However, I decided to take pity on her, some girl from the slums overtaken by the sophistication and elegance of the elites, and did not wake her as a quietly removed my earphone - still playing that raging music - and stood up beside her. Then I heard the ding of her phone.

Later, during that chilly night inside of the facility, I would fantasize about how my life might have been if I had just walked away. It would be the only time I betrayed my own sense of purpose surrounding Ruby Rose.

I bent over and picked up her phone, saw a text message from a sender labeled 'Yang.'

Hey sis, where are you?

It's not really my fault that I noticed that she didn't have a lock on her phone. When I opened it, I meant only to respond to who must have been her sister, texting back her location outside of my room. But as I closed her Messenger app, the clearing logo of her contacts spoke to me, practically begged me to open. And how could I resist, really, from entering my number into her phone? Just in case she becomes I valuable connection, I told myself, turning her phone off and sliding it onto the floor at her side.

It was only then that I turned and entered my room, loosening the hair tie around my ponytail and allowing my hair the rest down my back, released from its strict prison. Some part of me felt rather rebellious, having slummed it with a lower class girl, listening to alternative music and sitting on the floor. My mother would be sick if she ever knew I let myself loosen up in front of one of my 'peers,' even though I doubted I'd ever see that peer again. The thought made me kind of sad, for some reason I felt that if I missed out on this Ruby girl, she'd do something big that I'd have wished I'd been a part of.

It didn't make much sense, how she seemed so big. She was just another stranger, another girl to perform for, and yet she seemed to take up both her entire body and all the space surrounding it. Even as I stood in my room, away from her presence, she was consuming my thoughts. Traces of her had touched me, and they would never leave.

I tried to clear my head, glanced at the clock and saw the hour was late enough for it to be appropriate for me to go to sleep. So I went to the bathroom attached to my bedroom, brushing my teeth, removing my makeup, and changing into a long nightgown. Most nights I would put product in my hair, something to keep it from tangling too badly if I tossed and turned, but I still felt rebellious, and somehow leaving out this silly little part of my routine felt less like a simple lack of effort on my part and more like I direct slap in my mother's face. Her rigid rules did not always consume me, I could say, sometimes I don't put this oil in my hair like I'm supposed to.

By the time I had fallen into bed I felt ridiculous and embarrassed, thinking myself stupid for considering myself rebellious, when just moments ago I had been speaking to Ruby. Oh, she was shy, I thought, but everything about her screamed that she was a real rebel, the type that I could only yearn to be within the confines of my safe house. Whatever she had done, my small transgressions could not compare. I turned over onto my side, the thick comforter on top of me shifting ever so slightly, and I faced the door. I wondered, as my tired mind fell into sleep, if Ruby was still sitting outside my room, or if her sister had come to collect her. She would wake up with my number in her phone, with memories of me sitting beside her, with an idea of what must have happened. Would she be glad, to have a way to contact me? Or would she not care? I didn't know why it mattered, she was just some stranger. But she was a very pretty, rebellious stranger, and every part of me was secretly hoping that I'd awake with a text message from her on my phone.

—-

I didn't awake to a text from Ruby, but rather from footsteps outside of my doorway. I checked the time on my phone, just last one in the morning. By now the maids should have retired, as well as all of the party guests, who surely would have left for their own mansions. I really shouldn't have cared at all, but in such a predictable environment like what I lived in, the unpredicted footsteps piqued my interest.

I roused from my bed, sneaked over to the door and opened it ever so slightly. I could hear murmuring, muffled voices quieted by their own intention. Whoever was speaking did not want to be heard. I closed the door, pressed my ear against the wood and listened as intently as possible.

"No, the only person in this hall is Weiss Schnee, and she is supposedly a very heavy sleeper. Besides, the rest of the house will be invaded by late night hookups and servants retiring to their quarters. This is the safest place to talk. Now have you brought it?"

"Yes, but it's still not steady. Using it right now might prove disastrous. We must wait until we have a successful prototype, or else this operation might explode into public view before we're ready."

"Now Sienna, you let me worry about keeping all of this underground. We need some type of prototype right now, or else our next step will have to be put off for a long time. We're talking years, Sienna, possibly decades. We have to start making moves now."

"This could destroy us if it doesn't work."

"We don't have another option."

A heavy sigh. "Alright." I hear something like glasses bumping against each other, the faint chink that rings slightly after making a toast. "I must go, there is no reason to linger, and I know Adam will be anxious to hear the results."

"You out too much faith in that boy."

"As you put too much faith in Cinder. Now, I really must be leaving." A pair of footsteps, quiet and precise, trailed out of the hallway, and after a minute of waiting, a second pair trailed after her.

Some sort of eagerness swallowed me, and with a stumbling hand and clumsy ferocity, I yanked my door open and stepped out into the hallway.

I immediately felt nausea rise in my stomach, but I forced down anything that might have been trying to come up. Down the hall by only a few steps, I watched as Roman Torchwick turned towards me. He looked the same as he did when I was a child, bright orange hair, a white trench coat and a dark cane. He smiled, and I shivered.

"Weiss," his voice oozed with fake affection, "what a pleasure to be seeing you, I had a feeling you might overhear something. Do me a favor, okay, and don't tell you mumsey about whatever you think you heard tonight. We wouldn't want a repeat of that accident, after all."

He turned away. He left the hall, and presumably the house. I ran to my bathroom and threw up into the bowl of the toilet. For a second I was back in the room I last saw Torchwick in, a rope wrapped around my heads tearing into my mouth. A man in a mask standing over my body with a scalpel. Roman cooing ironically about how he'd miss my singing voice, when everything was over.

I passed out on the cold bathroom floor, lying in my own sweat and tears.

I dreamed of my father.