Homeless Bunny 13

Things moved fairly quickly after that eventful night. I took Ruby's "baby" home with me so I could slowly mold the runes into the blade and shaft of her scythe. We met up the next weekend so I could give her a quick lesson on how to use the new gravity and wind enchantments. She couldn't do much, really just make her weapon heavier, lighter, and toss a wind blade a dozen yards, but that was intentional.

Ruby was… excitable… The last thing Vale needed was Ruby Rose with a WMD and zero training. The runes were made to draw on her magic, not mine. As she gained mastery of her silver eyes, so too would the weapon grow with her. I figured a bit of extra incentive would make her try harder.

In other news, I was right about Neo. The ice cream addict broke her boss out of prison within hours of him turning himself in. The pair went right back to terrorizing the police, though they made sure to stay clear of me. I didn't think I traumatized them that much, but who knew where Roman was concerned.

Convincing Junior to let go of the twins was surprisingly not as hard as I'd expected. Yang would work on the weekends at the club. So would myself and the twins. It wasn't as though we were leaving entirely and there was some worth to having a Beacon team associated with his business.

It was always about legitimacy.

I did feel a little bad about taking his best officers with me, so I spent the last week drilling something resembling skill into his men. They wouldn't be winning any awards anytime soon, but at least none of them held their machetes in a reverse grip like the world's most retarded praying mantises.

Really, that was embarrassing to watch.

As for the twins…

"I can't believe you're making us go back to school," Miltiades complained. She was leaning against the glass as Beacon Academy approached in the distance. "We're twenty-three."

"You wanted to learn from me? Well this is how you learn from me," I said plainly.

"Ugh, but come on, bun-bun, we're assassins," Melanie griped. "How did you even get Ozpin to let us in?"

"I'm very persuasive."

"You're awful."

"Your cooperation is unnecessary."

"Why do you even want to attend Beacon?" Miltia asked for the eighth time this week. "You're way stronger than any of these chumps." A few students nearby glared at us, took one look at me, and suppressed laughter as they walked by.

"Because I've learned everything I can at Junior's," I explained indulgently. "Think of all the friends you can make."

"Yeah, like that blonde bimbo?" Melanie snarked, pointing to the other side of the bullhead.

There was Yang Xiao Long, the idiot with the shotgun-gauntlets I beat up a few weeks back. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, all pale with wide eyes and pinprick pupils. She'd taken the seat as far away from me as possible and hadn't budged despite Ruby's best attempts to drag her sister over to say hello.

The younger sister though, had no such hesitation, any trauma I'd caused paved over with the wonderful gift of a brand new weapon. She still looked a little shellshocked from all the world-shaking revelations Ozpin and I unloaded on her the other night, but she at least seemed happy to see me.

"Knock it off," I chided the twins. They'd been sending smug glances towards Yang, like children who brought their big brother to a schoolyard scuffle. "Remember that whatever trauma you think Yang has, I'm going to be training you three times as hard as before when we get to Beacon."

The pair froze as the sheer terror of my promise sank in. Their smirks became distinctly wooden as they looked at one another. Some unspoken communication passed between them. Then, deciding on their only possible path of survival, they leaned into me on either side and did their best to look as cute and harmless as possible.

"Y-You wouldn't do that," Melanie tried, lower lip stuck out in what was meant to be an adorable pout.

"Y-Yeah… We're your favorites, right?" Miltia joined her on my other side. "We're friends. Friends don't bully friends."

I rolled my eyes at their melodramatics. Really, I wasn't going to be any harsher on them than I was on Laura. A lot less actually considering they couldn't regenerate missing limbs in a few seconds.

"Quit it with the cutesy act," I chided. "It's not bullying; it's training. Besides, Ruby does it better."

"You're so mean…"

"Relax, think of this as a training camp with friends, fun, and self-improvement-"

"From hell," Melanie grumbled.

"-and a fluffy, adorable teacher-"

"From hell," Miltia added.

"-who will stop feeding you if you don't knock it off."

"We'll behave," the twins chorused, defeated by the might of my cooking.

"Good. Besides, Hell's not as bad as people say it is. Beelzebub was kind of a pushover," I drawled. That was how I got the Reaper of Harvests Authority. The real hard part of fighting Beelzebub wasn't surviving Hell or killing him, it was finding the primary locust after he turned into a couple billion of the little fuckers.

Melanie rolled her eyes but didn't remove herself from my shoulder. "Pretend we didn't hear that?"

"Already forgotten," Miltia said, just one more thing they dismissed from their minds as more "Tianyu-ness."

"-Roman Torchwick, notorious criminal who continues to evade authorities," the news played in the background. They even showed off his mugshot, clearly after someone had roughed him up a bit.

"Heh, I can see why he wears that stupid hat now," Melanie chuckled.

"Already out of prison, sis," Miltia added. "He owes Junior one."

"I mean, Tianyu put him there so does that count?"

"I'm not part of the Xiong Family," I said for the umphteenth time. "I'm just a chef."

"Right… What's with our fourth teammate anyway?"

"She had to arrive at Beacon early," I told her, technically the truth. "She'll be waiting for us when we land."

X

Sure enough, Amber the Fall Maiden was waiting for us. She was a deeply tanned woman with chestnut-brown eyes and hair. She kept her hair at shoulder-length and had a small mole beneath her left eye.

All told, she dressed remarkably conservatively in varying shades of cream and brown. It was eye-catching precisely because she looked so normal. Compared to other huntsmen who seemed to try to stand out as much as possible, Amber was a breath of fresh air, a dove amongst peacocks.

She did however have a long staff with a large, red dust crystal on top. From what little I knew of dust, I could tell it was of high quality, maybe one of the purest you could find.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

She also held a large, cardboard sign with my name on it as though we were in an airport.

I took the twins in hand and pulled them towards her. "Hi, you must be Amber. Enjoy the cake pop?"

She looked at me with a bashful smile. "Y-Yes, it was delicious. Thank you for healing me."

"You're very welcome." I gestured to each twin. "These are the Malachites. The white one is Melanie, the red one is Miltiades. She goes by Mil or Miltia."

"Hello, I hope we can be friends."

The twins stared down the Maiden. I got the feeling they wouldn't get along. The pair were assassins, trained since young to take what they could. Amber was a Maiden, a defender of humanity. They couldn't be more diametrically opposed if they tried.

For her part, Amber looked unexpectedly nervous. I expected someone with so much power to be a little more confident in herself.

I tried to pave over the awkward first impressions with a joke. "Don't worry about their terrible attitudes. Just feed them and they'll cuddle up to you. Like cats actually. They even come with claws."

"We'd stab you, but that wouldn't do anything," Melanie glared.

"But where's the lie though?"

"Ugh, whatever. Let's just go to orientation."

The four of us began to awkwardly shuffle towards the main hall. The twins continued to glare at Amber like kittens who'd had their territory intruded upon.

I'd told them about her being a Maiden; they were my disciples now and I felt no need to hide what I was doing. After all, I intended to train them to the best of my abilities so they could truly stand on their own feet like Laura.

Still, maybe letting them know that our last teammate was a figure who'd inherited a legendary power was a bad thing? They seemed a bit cagey around Amber, even more than was typical of them. I wanted us to start with as few secrets as possible between us but maybe this only intimidated them further.

If I was a normal person put on a team with a Campione and a Maiden… would I have been happy? Thank my lucky stars at how overpowered the team was? Or would I have been scared? Of being left behind? Marginalized? Of not being good enough?

'I should train them harder,' I thought. I'd already resolved to do so now that I'd officially taken them as my own, but if they felt inadequate standing in front of someone like Amber, the solution was obviously to make sure they no longer had to feel that way anymore.

Then I heard it. Yelling, a dainty sneeze, followed by a deafening bang. The few of us who were still standing in the courtyard turned to the noise. A cloud of smoke was quickly dissipating.

"Is that the red brat?" Melanie asked.

"And a white brat," Miltia said.

I made a show of giving them a once-over. "Pot. Kettle."

"Yeah, but we make our outfits look good."

I rolled my eyes. The smoke cleared to reveal Ruby Rose, silver-eyed warrior and owner of the single deadliest weapon on Remnant. Her face was covered in soot, as was the other girl's.

The other girl had white hair and… everything else… There was a prominent scar over her eye, giving her a wilder look that contrasted with her elegant dress. I had to give it to her; she was very pretty.

Then she opened her mouth and began berating Ruby.

"Unbelievable! This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about!" she yelled. "You complete dolt! What are you even doing here? Aren't you a little young to be attending Beacon?"

I looked at the pair. The white one was maybe half an inch taller than Ruby. They honestly looked the same age. "I'm not crazy, right? They're the same height?"

"Just about," Amber said. "Do you know them?"

"Weiss Schnee, heiress of the Schnee Dust Company," Melanie chimed in. The twins weren't the head of the Xiong Family, but that hardly meant they weren't well-informed. Being Junior's bodyguards, they learned quite a bit about everyone worth knowing and Weiss Schnee wasn't exactly subtle. "And the red one's a puppy Tianyu adopted."

I shrugged. "Pretty much."

"This isn't your ordinary combat school. It's not just sparring and practice, you know. We're here to fight monsters," the Schnee heiress went on. "So watch where you're going!"

"Hey, I said I was sorry, princess," Ruby shot back. It was good to see there was a limit to her social awkwardness.

"Are you going to go save your puppy?" Miltia nodded towards them.

"I could…" I hummed. Then I got a great idea. "Wanna see something funny?"

"Sure."

"What's her parents' names again? Jacques and…"

X

Ruby Rose

Operation: Normal Girl with Normal Knees was already FUBAR and it was all Yang's fault! She ditched me! How could she? It's not like I'm her one and only sister in the whole wide world or something!

And then, just to cap off this crap-tastic day, I knocked over some crabby girl's luggage and literally blew up!

"It's heiress actually," a black-haired girl with golden eyes walked up tous. In her hand was one of the dust vials that must have rolled her way. "Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, one of the largest producers of energy propellant in the world."

"Finally, some recognition," Weiss crowed.

"The same company infamous for its controversial labor forces and questionable business partners."

Weiss went from smug to indignant faster than Uncle Qrow could empty a bottle of whiskey. "W-Wha-How dare-"

Before she could get started on a renewed tirade, the courtyard was filled with an unexpected shout.

"SIISSTTTEEERRRR!" Tianyu blurred into her with a tackle-hug that would have probably crippled someone without aura. It was a lot slower than I'd seen him move, but still nearly my top speed.

I wasn't jealous.

He tackled Weiss to the ground and straddled the taller girl, sitting on her tummy like a giant puppy… or bunny… He looked down at her with big, crimson eyes full of adoration and unshed tears. On his face was a giant happy grin that made it impossible to be upset with him.

"Oh, Brothers," he swore, which brought a desperate giggle out of me considering I knew for a fact he wanted to murder one of them. "I finally found you! Dad said I could find you if I became a hunter and here you are!"

"W-What? What are you talking about? Get off me?" she shrieked. We were drawing a crowd now. It'd be impossible not to. First my… unfortunate… explosion, then a rabbit faunus swearing he was Weiss Schnee's long lost brother. People were coming back from the auditorium just to watch this mess.

I'd seen him on the bullhead of course, but Yang hadn't wanted to say hi to the super-scary bunny. She didn't even know half of what I knew, though to be fair, I understood. Then when we landed, a third girl had somehow been waiting for him. I didn't know how Beacon formed teams, but it was clear they were one unit. I wanted to join them so Tianyu and I could talk about our baby, but my social awkwardness kicked in and the three pretty, older girls intimidated me.

And then he tackled Weiss Schnee. And turned and winked at me.

He skipped up and grabbed Weiss by the hand before yanking her to her feet.

"I'm your big brother! I mean, it took a bit longer to study for Beacon but I'm so happy to meet you!" he yelled, shaking her hands hard enough to make her whole body rock back and forth.

"I only have one brother! What are you talking about?"

He grabbed his white ears and flapped them around like tiny wings. "See? White! Like you! Pops says I get it from Mama Willow. That's your mom, right?"

The black-haired girl looked at me, then at the unbelievable scene before us. "You… know him?"

"Tianyu Yue, amazing chef and blacksmith and fighter and dust-engraver and like everything else," I explained. Off to the side, I could see the meanie twins cackling on the ground in laughter. The red one had her scroll out and the white one was holding the brown-haired girl back so she wouldn't interfere. "He's also a bit of a bully."

"Not her brother?"

"Definitely not," I said confidently. Then I thought about all the random crap I'd learned. A lot of things I thought I knew about the world turned out to be wrong. Really wrong. Like, so wrong I'd be shipped off to the loony bin if I ever tried to tell anyone.

Could… Could Tianyu not be joking? He didn't need much convincing to come to Beacon, the same bunny who swore up and down that he was a chef. No matter how unfairly, absurdly strong he was.

Could he have planned this? Junior was an information broker. He knew things. If anyone could tell Tianyu where his long-lost sister would go to school, it was him, right? Was that why he was at Junior's? That made him like Yang, right? She was looking for Raven and Tianyu was looking for his sister.

Nothing said he couldn't be a Schnee… He probably wasn't but…

The more I thought about it, the less sure I became. He did have the… "Glyphs!" I blurted out.

"Ha!" Weiss said proudly. She wrenched her hands from Tianyu's grip and jumped back. Then, she pulled out a rapier and slashed the air. A snowflake-like circle formed in the air. "That dolt does know something after all. A Schnee has glyphs. It's our Semblance, proof of our family lineage. Well?"

Tianyu clapped his hands. "Wow, that's what yours looks like?"

"Exactly! Now you can stop this nonse-"

She couldn't finish. In Tianyu's hands was a glyph of his own. It bloomed as a golden light between his palms before taking on a yin yang symbol. Then, even as we watched, five ancient Mistralian inscriptions wrote themselves into the air, forming a perfect pentagon between them. A five-pointed star connected them even as each point sprouted a circle of its own. Finally, a line of ancient script encircled the whole thing in brilliant gold, glowing like a small sun.

It was breathtaking. I'd seen it a few times before, mostly when he used it to do silly things like stir-fry vegetables faster, but I'd never really taken a close look at it until now.

The entire courtyard fell silent. Even the birds stopped chirping.

"I call it my seal. You call yours a glyph? I mean, that's cool too," Tianyu babbled happily. "Look! I have mine too, see? See?"

"I… How…"

"Well anyway, it was great to see you again, sister," he said, giving her a quick hug. "I'm going to go on ahead with my friends, okay? See you around!"

And just like that, he was gone as fast as he came.

For such a little guy, he was awfully good at shattering people's grip on reality…

Author's Note

Yes, this is a colossal dick move on Tianyu's part. But it's funny so meh. I've decided to play the crack straight.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.