Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tap.

Ta-ta-tap.

Ta-ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta-ta-tap.

“...arigold.”

Ta-ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta-ta-tap.

“Mister Marigold.”

Fingers fidgeting in their boredom go still, the drumming cut short.

Wincing in discomfort, a student in the back of the class turns away from his vigil – staring out the window into the dark, drab Atlas skyline – brushes the shaggy blue hair out of his eyes, and faces front.

“Whilst your grades throughout this semester have been impeccable enough to explain your apparent disinterest, it would be appreciated that you not allow it to disrupt the focus of your peers.”

Without even waiting for the mumbled apology, the graying Professor Pumice resumes rattling on up by the hard-light holo-display at the head of the classroom, in the hurry expected of a stodgy man wringing all he can out of his twilight years.

There’s little lesson left, mostly briefing the third-year Special Operations Advanced Placement students on assignments looming in the coming days.

“Field missions for next week’s Midterm Practicals will be scheduled overnight from Thursday into Friday; your other instructors will be advised of your absences, so do remember to acquire your coursework ahead of time. Dust will be supplied, though all advanced blends must be cleared with the quartermaster.”

With military precision – because how ELSE do they do anything here at this godsforsaken academy – the grainy, deprecated audio of a bell-chime sounds from the PA system just as Pumice concludes his spiel.

“Class is dismissed. Miss Ginger, if you’ll wait a moment – I’d still like to speak with you about your proposed weaponry alterations...”

The room erupts into a cacophony of scooting chair legs, rustling papers, and no few exclamations of joy for the end of their extended school day, as the majority of students pack up their books and make themselves scarce.

Getting up seems like a chore, but all the cool kids are doing it.

‘Mister Marigold’ isn’t in as much of a hurry, but even with the long-standing reputation for moody brooding, sticking around in a fugue’s only going to invite unwanted questions – Not really a huge fan of those.

Books are shuffled off into an academy-issue schoolbag, rumples are smoothed out of a standard, starchy academy-issue boy’s uniform, and a course is set for… not here. Not here is a good enough place to be.

Except, that’s a decidedly Schnee-brand throat-clearing coming from behind, cutting short his escape. Figures.

“Marigold. I trust that you–“

Thus accosted, he stops in the doorway and spins, scooting offside to let a pair of giggling schoolgirls through.

It’s fairly obvious what this is about, anyway; reasons why Winter Schnee would be nagging without prior provocation are typically pretty predictable. Their shared background among the Atlas Elite somehow made them Group Project Partners By Default ever since their “considerable potential” got them cherry-picked for this exclusive preparatory course.

Bullshit. The skill-assessment algorithms didn’t have a damned thing to do with putting them on Ironwood’s short list for grooming. Just their surnames and semblances.

“Hold your thoroughbred horses, Winny. Already turned everything in. Even annotated the bibliography all by my lonesome – You’re welcome.”

Rolling her eyes at the recurring, sophomoric nickname, Winter clasps her hands behind her back in her irritatingly perfect, professional posture, and nods curtly.

“I… I see. I simply wished to confirm you’d done so before the deadline. I’d rather avoid a repeat of last month.”

“We still got an A!”

Winter fixes him with a milk-curdling look – the ‘Not An A-Plus’ is implicit. “I’ve also overheard you’ve been routinely absent from your team’s scheduled blocks in the training hall. Again.”

“Ooh, been stalking me? Careful, people might start to get ideas about us.” Marigold’s not in a smiling mood, but sassing about their parents’ poorly-veiled past efforts to pair them up is good for a freebie.

“Hardly. It doesn’t matter much to me if the competition is slacking in their group training for Vytal – I’d welcome the easier victory – but if it should effect our performance in the field next week, then it becomes my problem.”

“And we don’t have enough of those already,” Marigold says dryly. “Y’know, we’re still top percentile for a reason. I’d tell you to chill, but the only challenge out there’ll be not freezing our asses off.”

“I will ‘chill’ when you attend a few sessions in the meantime for my peace of mind.” Her drastically unreasonable demands made, the fellow trainee lingers, having already taken after the awkward conversational dismounts of her idol, dear General Ironwood himself. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. Good evening, then.”

“Hmph. Same to you, Schnee.”

Winter steps around and saunters out into the halls, not so crowded now that basic classes have been adjourned for a few hours now. Possibly off to brown-nose aforementioned Headmaster, or sniff out opportunities for extra credit to shore up her qualifications... as if they aren’t both already shoo-ins for AceOp commissions the instant they graduate.

Though, in all fairness, she’s not the only one reluctant to return to their dorm.

Ever since it was discovered that a certain member of a certain team would routinely be held up obscenely late every Friday for Specialist-Prep classes, Fridays eventually defaulted to Girls’ Night in their extended absence – free time for planning dates without having to accommodate the straggler.

Marigold would happen to be that team member. His hesitation to intrude on the three happily-committed huntresses having yet another fun hangout session or… or makeout session, or whatever, is what finds him taking the longest, most superfluous, most labyrinthine path through the otherwise clear-cut Academy campus to get back to the dormitory block.

On and off, he pops his invisibility semblance, vanishing into thin air as he drifts through crowds like an aimless ghost, shimmering back into place in deserted passages and shadowed stairwells.

Coming around into the silent, monochrome halls of Grimm Sciences from the much louder Engineering wing, he finds an empty stretch of wide, wall-length window, and with a lack of traffic passing through, plops down onto the vacant bench by the opposite wall.

Just… staring, some more. Out into the darkened gloom of stormclouds lit with light pollution. Because it’s just been that profanely gray kind of day, the sort where the meteorological phenomena decide to run a tag-team in perfect sync with the specific level of misery in store.

 The snow’s falling fierce this evening, and that’s even factoring in Upper Atlas’ specialized climate control; Mantle below must be getting pelted with a full-on blizzard, sweeping under the edges of the skybound city to hammer the heating grid. The clouds’ve stayed the same dark gunmetal shade, give or take a filter of deep, murky blue as the sun behind them subsides.

Marigold can relate.

He’s had a bad feeling today. Granted, he’s had an ongoing ‘bad feeling’ for a long, long time, but– No, a specific, premonitory feeling. Like something’s coming to a head, and soon. Where every little stressor he fails to dodge is running out the clock, and sooner or later he’ll be forced over the top of the trench – muddy, bleak, and under constant barrage – to meet his fate in no-man’s land.

And alright, maybe, maybe that’s just the recent cram-study on Great War military history getting to him and spurring his imagination, but it still feels apt as all hell.

Starting with an unwanted letter from home first thing in the morning – right after sleeping through his first alarm – to a humiliating fumble during midmorning spars, skipping lunch to avoid the crowded cafeteria, double-homework from Advanced Dust Application, then Pumice hitting them with the threat of tests out in the tundra, the day’s been doing its damnedest to lean its weight onto the monolith already pressing down on Marigold’s chest, about to crack him open.

A whole-ass monolith of an existential crisis – not that he’d be willing to call it that. One that’s been slowly building, brick by brick by boulder, for years. Longer than he can even remember the specifics, truthfully; that twinge of wrong feels like it’s always been roiling under his skin and rotting away.

And gods so help anyone who says he should bring it up to the Academy counselors; he doesn’t even want to think about it. Acknowledging it makes the feeling worse, puts screws to the brain. Like one of those fae from old-world folklore, granting it a name gives it power. So… he doesn’t.

Doesn’t really feel like being looked at right now, either. Doesn’t want to be acknowledged.

Hell, being perceived in any way is grating.

And inasmuch as being back in the safe confines of one’s own living space might be a load of anxiety off the mind, the fact that living space means being surrounded in close quarters by three beautiful girls, laughing and joking and just… getting to be, getting to live, is really, really not going to help. Not right now.

Not with all that’s been on his mind. All he’s wished he could make sense of.

Might’ve been better to stay invisible, though, regardless of the drain on his aura – Marigold’s pried from his thoughts as an upper-echelon Atlas Military officer passes through, giving a nod in acknowledgment. “Evening, young man!”

Even as it scours his insides like a shot of detergent, he’s obliged to toss up the mandatory salute so the soldier’ll just keep on walking, and won’t stop to be a hassle. Once the man’s goose-stepped along his merry way, Marigold’s arm drops, and he heaves a sigh.

Fine.

Fine, he’ll just… just swing by the dorm for a minute, drop off the schoolbag, change into some warmer, thicker, baggier clothes, and scram. Go out into the city, find somewhere else to sit and think. Invisible, if he has to be. Maybe even if he doesn’t.

Okay, maybe going in is a more challenging prospect than he’d thought.

When one puts their mind to it, it’s only a ten minute walk and a short elevator ride to get to the dormitory wing from just about anywhere on campus, unless you’re up in one of the outer towers.

So, logically, there should be no reason why, nigh on half an hour later, a student who set out on this ten minute journey has yet to arrive at their destination, instead pacing back, forth, and back again along the length of the hallway, occasionally stopping to lean on a windowsill and pretending to be reading their scroll.

The hell is your problem? It’s no different from any other Friday. From any other ‘Girls’ Night.’ You always barge in and sour the mood every week, even earlier than this. Just man up and– Fuck. No. Just… just suck it up and go. You live there, too.

A door’s mechanical swish sounds halfway down the hall as Marigold makes another loop, and a purplish-haired head pops out. That prissy diva, Hilda… no, Helga Veilchen, from VLIT.

Of course it had to be; because Veilchen’s in SpecOps prep too – meaning she can guess EXACTLY how long he’s been skulking around while she made the walk like a sane person.

“Uh, did you, like… lose your scroll or something?” she asks. “We heard someone stomping around for a while now, and...”

Because of course that’s what anyone would think. Why ELSE would somebody be pacing loops like a jackass outside their own room for so long, unless they’d lost their scroll and couldn’t use their ID to unlock the door. No. No, he didn’t lose his scroll. He lost his nerve is what.

Helga pinches her brows at the lack of response, and continues trying to be somewhat helpful. “Because, like, you could always go borrow the faculty keycard from the janitor?”

Coughing to try and clear a rasp from his throat, Marigold shakes his head and waves a definitely-not-missing scroll in the air. “Thanks, but I’ve got it. Don’t worry about me.”

That’s… huh. Helga doesn’t exactly know what to think about why the weirdo emo boy from down the hall is wasting good weekend time wandering the halls like a stalker at this hour of evening, but… this is literally as involved as she cares to get.

“Oh. Um, whatever? See you in class, I guess...”

The door to VLIT’s space zips shut, and Marigold’s forehead clonks against the wall just adjacent the one for his own team.

Fuck it. Into no-man’s-land it is.

“Draw three,” says Robyn.

Fiona pouts. “I’m breaking up with you.”

“Didn’t you already break up with me over breakfast?”

“Teeeechnically, yes! But–“

Before Fiona can give a well-reasoned explanation to their current, flip-flopping state of togetherness, the door into the team’s dorm emits a Beep-pa-beep CLICK, and slides open.

In shyly steps the haggard fourth member of their team, while the three already in attendance turn to greet them.

Seems this week was more hang-out than make-out. From the looks of it, Robyn and Fiona’ve changed into their pajamas and been thrashing each other at some sort of Crater-rules card game, with the draw and play piles laid out across Joanna’s abs, whilst she lazes out on the floor in nothing but the shorts and sports bra she uses for gym.

Robyn’s the first to react, clapping her hands together and announcing: “Why, Future Specialist Marigold graces us with his presence! ...Guess that’s a wrap on Girls’ Night, folks – And not just because I’m still four cards up and need an out.”

Fiona giggles and sneakily returns a pair of cards to the pile while their leader’s distracted, and Joanna simply returns to tapping at her scroll. Jokes aside, none of the girls actually seem particularly fazed by the intruder in their midst.

Just an intruder who never belonged with them. Or at home, really. Belonged anywhere. A wolf in sheep’s cl– Wait, no. Fiona. A fox in the henhouse. There, better analogy.

Marigold hangs his head, blue bangs falling over his eyes, and shuffles around the trio to pitch his schoolbag onto the bottom-left bunk along the wall. “No, I’m just… gonna get a change of clothes, and I’ll go. Don’t let me ruin it for you.”

Because no matter how lightheartedly Robyn had said it, no matter her blatant sarcasm, her easygoing smirk, the charming wink… 

It still hurts.

This is why he shouldn’t have come back so soon. Or maybe at all. ‘At all’ sounds fine too.

“Sure, you could scurry off, if you want. Unless…”

Already halfway to the bathroom with the rattiest, most worn-out, oversized hoodie he owns, Marigold’s stopped short by the sound of their leader thinking aloud.

Only when he turns is he startled to find that Robyn’s never once pried her gaze away, not since that initial jab.

Contrary to popular belief, Robyn Hill possesses more than just a keen archer’s eye and the charisma of a habitual flirt: As a woman often ostracized for her capacity to root out the truth wherever it hides – even before her lie-detection semblance was in play – her life ‘til now’s provided her plenty of practice honing the craft of reading subtle cues of body language, the undertones of replies.

And she can absolutely tell something’s up. That something’s different, his guard lower than normal.

“...Unless you’d like to join us. No reason Girls’ Night can’t run a little longer this week, right?”

What?

“Tssh, don’t give him that look, or he’ll think we wanna eat him alive,” Joanna snorts, briefly glancing between the two before resuming her scroll-game.

He can’t help the subtle tensing of his features at the wording. The particular phrasing. And it’s more than obvious Robyn spots it too: the split-second that brows furrow, lips tighten, compared to seeming so astounded – hopeful? – seconds before.

This is a bad idea, phenomenally so. He already doesn’t want to think about… about things, about the discomfort that’s been drowning him, and Robyn’s starting to look an awful lot like a hound on his scent.

There’s an unusual air in the room tonight.

He should really, really go, even if he has nowhere else to be. Even if this isn’t one of the weekends designated for a mandatory return to the Marigold family estate. Even if he can’t pull another all-nighter in the library without raising suspicions.

But… damn it, he wants to stay, even though he shouldn’t, even though that gut feeling of an imminent catastrophe’s riding close behind, and that’s got him frozen like a deer in the headlights. That’s enough of an opening for Robyn’s coy smile to return, and for her to reach across her girlfriend-slash-card-table to pat her other girlfriend on the shoulder.

“Fiona, sweetheart. I believe we might need another round of refreshments, if you’d be so kind?”

Beaming, Fiona snaps into an intentionally lopsided botch of the Atlas military salute, already drawing on her semblance to materialize a cooler right out of her other hand. “Aye-aye, captain!”

“Hey, I never said I was going to stay. What makes you think I’d want to… hang around you lovebirds while you...”

Three sets of eyes spear Marigold to the wall. Not even angrily, not annoyed, just… incredulous. Disbelieving in the most amused and petty fashion.

‘Who are you kidding?’ they seem to ask. ‘For whom, pray tell, is this performance?’

“...W-whatever, just don’t leave me with some shitty beer,” he gripes, hauling his change of clothes into the bathroom and bumping the door most of the way shut.

Joanna cups a hand to her mouth and calls after him. “We got nothin’ on tap any worse than the last time YOU handled our drinks! With your nasty meat-tea!”

The door cracks back open an inch. “Excuse me for TRYING to share a bit of FINE CULTURE!”

“It tasted like homeopathic hot dog water!”

“That was Lapsang Souchong, and I didn’t even get a thank-you!”

The door slams to a chorus of laughter from the girls in varying levels of boisterousness.

Joanna neatly pulls the cluttered stacks of cards off her rippled midsection and rolls up into a hunch. “M’surprised we got a yes. Is it just me, or has Little Prince been keeping his distance even more than usual these days? ...Which is saying something.”

“No, yeah, it’s weird, right? He never used to have a problem hanging out with us! Like, did we do something wrong?” Fiona gives Joanna a meaningful look, then to Robyn as well. “Is… is it because we’re all three dating now? ...’cuz Joanna joined us like, half a year ago, and it didn’t feel like that changed anything…!”

“I don’t think it’s us, Lambchop,” Robyn notes seriously, angling to give her faunus girlfriend’s ear a quick, affectionate rub. “Seems like something else has been gnawing at our resident rich boy’s heels, and I, for one, don’t like what I’m seeing.”

“He wasn’t missing practice as much there for a while, but now...”

Absently shuffling the decks of cards for wont of something to do, Joanna lets her voice drop. “More than practice. You notice he’s been skipping meals again? And not just lunch.”

This doesn’t exactly surprise Robyn. “He already vents to us about his parents, we’d know if they’d done something new. Think someone’s been bullying him?”

Joanna shrugs. “I dunno, maybe? I sure haven’t seen it.”

“No way,” Fiona disagrees with a sullen certainty. “I know the bullies around here. He’s got too big of a family name, if they were bullying him, it’d have to be with something big enough we’d see.”

Fiona unfortunately ‘knows’ far too many bullies for the rest of their liking, but the point still stands. Being higher on the social hierarchy grants that kind of immunity, being elevated above stolen bookbags or lunch money shakedowns. Instances of harassment between this school’s upper-crustiest heirs and heiresses that escalate beyond petty, two-faced passive-aggressiveness are rare, but loud, bloody, and brutal to match; the kind that sinks entire family reputations. If someone had dropped that kind of payload on Marigold already, they wouldn’t be whispering about it, wondering whether it happened at all.

Robyn sighs, habitually flexing the fingers of her right hand. “All I know is that I’m spying a lot of red flags. I won’t pry out anything that doesn’t want out, but... I’ve got half a mind to find out why.”

To Marigold’s relief, there’s no terrible-tasting bargain beer on tap tonight. Mostly hard lemonade, butterscotch schnapps, a cheap bottle of rosé wine Fiona produced, only to pack away again for a future date night… immediately thereafter passing around some even-cheaper 12-ounce novelty cans of bubbly from very same brand. ‘The bottle’s the romantic part,’ apparently. No one really has a logical counterargument.

None among the team are heavy drinkers – booze habits cost money – and never indulge too deeply on a regular basis, which sits just fine with Marigold. For starters, he doubts he’d managed to inherit the absurd alcohol tolerance of his socialite parents, but more crucially… the thought of becoming so inebriated he’d start to talk a little too freely about things he shouldn’t is always a latent fear.

But that shouldn’t be a problem tonight, right…? Just a comfortable buzz, that’s all it is, enough to help take the edge off, and gods, does he need it. So what if he’s had a bit more than the others? They were probably already cracking into the cooler when they were alone together. It’s fine. It’s fine. Maybe one more.

The ongoing card game is resumed with a new player dealt in, but cut short due to rampant cheating. Any reprimands are soon put on hold due to displays of excessive cuteness from a devious fluffy-haired faunus; abusing her adorability to get away with illicit acts is swiftly declared a form of cheating, too.

From there, the main event continues to shift wildly. For as much as Fiona’s semblance is a boon for storage in their cramped living area, stowing board games in a pocket dimension carries the frequent unfortunate side-effect of loose pieces going missing in the endless abyss, only retrieved months after the fact. As such, Checkers is the best they can muster, and for Huntsman Academy students in their twenties, that gets old before the first round’s through.

There’s jack-squat on Atlesian television to watch together on the holo-projector, so bogarting Marigold’s premium streaming subscription is a must. It’s difficult to pick something to settle on, and somewhere after Robyn finishes a compelling ethics rant about commercialized faunus sexploitation flipping through the porno pay-per-views, the rest unilaterally vote for razzing on a campy old B-movie collection. Too lazy to make the trip to the kitchen in the dorm commons, someone – clearly not their faultless, intrepid leader who has NEVER made an embarrassingly bad call in her life – jokes about using fire dust granules to make the popcorn.

Coincidental safety tip: keeping a foam-based fire extinguisher in one’s pocket dimension is always a sensible idea. Forgetting about the heat differentials for diluted civilian dust and pure military-grade crystal is not.

Half an hour into picking apart overdone film tropes, Fiona tries to drag things back on course with a sly suggestion of Truth-or-Dare, all the while giving Robyn an elbow nudge, but is swiftly overruled. Too on-the-nose; that’s best saved for a more whimsical night, and Joanna’s pick of Never-Have-I-Ever is similarly scrubbed. Marigold’s starting to look a tiny bit tipsy, and kicking off a drinking game at this point could turn things real unhealthy, real fast.

...Actually, come to think of it, Marigold’s been quiet for a while now. So caught up in the usual chaos of their hangouts, the girls forgot to keep up with their routine ‘having fun?’ check-ins with their fourth member. In such a short amount of time unattended, their Little Prince has grown unfocused, nursing the dregs of someone else’s margarita and slipping back into the burrow of his thoughts.

“Hey,” Fiona asks, shimmy-scooting on her butt back to where Marigold’s slumped against the bunks. “You alright?”

“Wish I could… Could do this all the time…” he hiccups, never once looking up from his knees.

The faunus looks taken aback; an unspoken 'what’s that supposed to mean?' Marigold already hangs out with them all the time – or used to, anyway – they’re a team, they share the same dorm, for crying out loud!

“Hey, nobody ever said you couldn’t! Like, calling Fridays ‘Girls’ Night’ was our fun little gimmick, but we always like having you here, just like any day of the week! Now it’ll just be… Pfft, Girls-and-Singular-Guy’s Night!”

Stop saying it like that, it hurts.

“...Huh? What hurts?”

Well, fuck. Unmitigated, wholesale fuck. That wasn’t supposed to be out loud.

“There it is again,” Joanna comments, in a low, wary voice. “He looks like you kicked him in the–“

She skids to a stop, cued by another instance of the very same unsubtle wince she’d spotted in the first place. Even without Robyn’s uncanny talent, she’s still sussed it out.

Marigold’s head snaps up to find the three girls now staring over with abject concern. Worry, even? No, suspicion. It’s suspicion. They’re going to know, and they can’t know, fuck, they can’t, not now. It was so nice to pretend, it could have been so nice...

“Actually, we’ve…” Robyn steadies herself, crawling to complete the impromptu semi-circle around the odd-one-out. “We’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

The ongoing level of fuck has grown by magnitudes.

“So… so what, is this whole thing all just some kind of intervention?” Marigold stammers, arms folded, knees in, curling into himself like a pillbug. Those honey-hued eyes of his flick between the three primary threats, a bit on the glassy side, or… wet? Why would he be tearing up all of a sudden?

Joanna leans an elbow on her knee, cheek smushed against her fist. “No, dumbass. We’re your team, we’re your friends, and you’re acting like something’s hurting you. You think we’re gonna stand for that? Even if that something’s us?”

They wouldn’t understand. “...It’s not you.”

Robyn gives Joanna an appreciative smile, then cranks its softness scale up to eleven as she knee-walks even closer to the fretful lump of oversized sweatshirt, nudging an empty bag of nacho cheesy-chips out of the way.

“Alright, then let’s figure this out together. You’ve been isolating yourself a lot more lately – even by your usual standards.” She speaks slowly and surely, dispatching with her constant charm and wit, and moving straight into sincerity mode.

“...But it couldn’t’ve been because you felt excluded from hanging out with us in general; you’ve done that plenty, and you know you’ve always been welcome. So, there was something else about it.  Something particular.”

Gods, it really is like she’s trying to play detective. Feels like Robyn should be pacing around a dimly-lit sitting room in a deerstalker hat, smoking a bubble-pipe and pinning a murder culprit instead of putting him on trial for the crime of Apparently Being Too Visibly Angsty.

“Like when we said certain stuff?” Fiona adds. “I don’t know what it was, but… but something was bugging you bad, you can just tell us!”

No, no he can’t. He can’t, gods damn it...

The internal monologue leaks out of his brain again, verbally transformed into sludgey muttering into his sleeve. The others don’t make out much else but ‘can’t’ and the flourish of profanity.

Picking up where she’d left off, Robyn ducks a bit to try and meet Marigold’s wavering eyes. She spotted the twitches, the bitter quirks, the grimaces. She’s stringing clues together with red string on a mental corkboard. “And those certain things that were said… They tended to be about our little Girls Night routine, or when someone called you–“

“Don’t…!”

Robyn blinks.

“It’s… don’t. I can’t. It’s…” Marigold doesn’t physically have the capability to hunker any deeper without bodily transforming into an armadillo, arms wrapped around his knees, but he’s giving it his best shot. “It’s too hard to talk about, it’s wrong, I don’t… I don’t know how to say it… It’s just… it’ll fuck things up, and…”

No one says a word. And when Marigold dares glance up again, the first thing he catches is the sight of Robyn’s hand, arm loosely extended, offered palm up. Inviting. Welcoming.

While Academy staff had registered it as ‘Lie Detection’ for official documentation, Robyn has never been so small-minded about her semblance's potential; she’s found it can be so much more than a measure for finding falsehoods, or a bellwether for intent. Not just a tool to rip the truth from another, but a tool to help seek a truth inside of oneself, to try and talk themselves through their thoughts – no matter how confused and strained, no matter what subconscious social preconceptions rise up to beat them down – with the light of her semblance as their guiding compass.

“Hey. I’m not ordering you, I’m not even telling you that you should. It’s all your choice, here. But, if you want to try… If you think it might help work out what you mean to say, help us understand, then...”

Damn it. This is so like her. Just so… insufferably smooth whenever she’s not being infuriatingly coy, calming when she’s not being cocky, and knowing just what to say on the rare occasion it actually matters. This is going to go so fucking wrong.

So bail already. They can’t find you with your Semblance on. Just go, just get out of here. There’s no way they’d – this isn’t the right time, it’s not safe. You could lose everything.

A wounded animal walking right into the snare, Marigold still takes the hand. Fingers tenderly interlinked, they begin to glow with Robyn’s semblance.

“I don’t… like being like this.”

There’s a little spritz of yellowish-green sparks amid the baseline lilac of Robyn’s aura, but they’re soon to fade. “Easy, easy. You know how this works. Vague won’t cut it. Just take your time, clear as you can.”

“I never have, as long as I can remember. And it just… gets worse, every year, and I can’t stop the feeling...”

The color comes in a little brighter, a little bolder – Confirms it’s definitely a longterm problem, not just something new coming out of left field.

“It’s… The way you see me. The way everyone sees me.”

Still on the right course; the color of their linked auras is in a holding pattern.

“Sees you how?” asks Fiona.

“That you’re… what, just some spoiled rich boy?” Joanna tosses in. “A bit of a brat sometimes?”

Almost hissing, Marigold shakes their head, messy blue locks fluttering up a storm. “Nngh–! See, that! That’s what I’m talking about…!”

“Rich? Brat?”

“BOY!”

…

Shit.

A heavy quiet holds court in their humble dorm, and all eyes fall hard on the joined hands, glowing a constant green. That was it. That was the trigger, the pressure point.

Robyn’s shattering heart breaks the silence. “Marigold…” she whispers. “Oh, hon.”

Behind her, the other two fare no better in the heart-breakage department. Fiona and Joanna link eyes, the latter uncharacteristically humbled, evidently feeling guilty for accidentally jabbing a thumb into the now-obvious bruise, but no less awed at the reluctant reveal. Fiona personally seems to be trying very, very hard not to launch herself bodily into their trembling teammate for a hug.

Said trembler is trembling a whole lot harder, eyes wide and growing frantic as the words spill out of them in a flood, tripping between truth and the terror of rejection. The panicked urge to go invisible is mounting rapidly.

“I-I’m… I’m not… a guy. I don’t… I never was, I mean. I don’t think, at least. Fuck. Fuck, I can’t… No, this is wrong, just – Just forget I said anything, I’m drunk, okay? I’m drunk, that’s why I’m saying all this stupid shit…”

Robyn still doesn’t let go, no matter how much the hand in hers is tensing tight. “You know how my semblance works. Wouldn’t be giving a good read if you were too far gone. You’re fine. It’s gonna be fine. Just breathe.”

Breathing is technically occurring, in all fairness, but it’s too uneven, too shallow and shaky for comfort. As Robyn keeps holding out the lifeline, Fiona’s self-control falters, and she goes ahead and rushes in for a tight embrace from the side.

Immediately, she has second thoughts; probably should have asked if it was alright to touch right now, but it… does seem to be slowing down the jitters. She makes a nonsensical hand gesture over to Joanna, who floats her a thumbs-up and crawls over to steady Marigold from their other side. It’s more of a hand-on-shoulder than a proper hug, but it’s something, and that something seems to help.

“Now, when you say you’re not a guy,” Robyn carefully probes, “are we talking… not feeling like much of anything, or feeling like you’re…?”

Guess there’s no helping it, now. It’s already game-over. Marigold lifts their head an inch up out from their elbow, lets their knees drift to the side. “Think I might... be a girl.”

Green. Fuzzy, but constant green, lighting their hands. That’s pretty godsdamned damning right there.

Sniffling as they – as she – stares deep into the fluorescence, she’s struck with an impulse. Just to test the boundaries of the experiment, she tries to backtrack: “I’m… a guy?”

Her teammates’ eyebrows furrow at her, then at the brief spurt of frizzy, jagged, spiky red prickling their glowing lilac link, before it settles back to its base shade. Nope.

“...Girl.” A ping, right back to green.

Robyn heaves a breathless laugh, but one carrying no small amount of relief. “I know you all forget, but this DOES still burn aura, so if you’re through using me as an incredibly attractive Magic 8-Ball, maybe we can move along? Well, unless...”

Unless? Another unless? The LAST ‘unless’ is what got them all into this mess!

But clear apprehensions aside – the dread that the shoe’s about to drop and the bomb’s ready to blow – nobody’s started spewing vitriol just yet. No hitting. No hating.

“Unless we wanna try for one more. One last little question before we call it a night.”

Robyn isn’t leering at Marigold, isn’t horrified, isn’t as absolutely aghast as she has all rights to be. She’s still just smiling that captivating, guileless smile.

“How about it, wanna go for a two-fer? ...Try us on a name.”

Admittedly, Robyn’s mildly aware this might be expecting too much, too fast, as this whole evening’s been a bit of a chaotic emotional clusterfuck, but so long as they’ve got this much momentum, so long as there’s a chance it might help the fledgling in her flock… Maybe she can afford the risky move.

“My name is–“

Marigold chokes up on the reflexive response, trained into her for a lifetime. Wrong. That’s not it, and never was. From the left, Joanna squeezes her shoulder and gives her a nod. From the right, Fiona tightens her clumsy hug, one sheep-ear skimming her shoulder.

“No, my name’s… My name’s May.”

The delay’s only a second in real-time, but for all gathered in attendance, the suspension stretches it wide, a silent drumroll before the lucent aura tinges truest green. Answers a question May hadn’t even been consciously confident about herself, until now. Now, it all comes together.

“Well, whaddya know. May Marigold.” Robyn releases May’s hand, the residual connection of their shining auras twinkling back out of sight. Giving her fingers a firm shake and popping a knuckle or two, she can’t help letting that serene smile crack right back to her trademark smirk. “Pretty name, for a pretty girl.”

Quickly catching onto the effort to dredge the mood back up from the frigid pits of deep-seated, long-fought identity crises, Joanna adjusts her hold to give May a bit of a noogie. “You know she’s a girl for all of sixty seconds, and you’re already flirting? In front of the ones you’re already dating, no less? Tch. For shame, Robbie.”

Not even addressing the heretofore inconceivable notion of her exclusively gay team captain even theoretically flirting with her, even as a JOKE like she just did, May protests the prior point. “It’s not that pretty! And I'm not- It was just… it’s just what I’d been feeling like using, to have the alliteration and shit, if I ever ended up telling anyone that I'm… but, it’s not that great, I should–“

“Nope, no takebacks!” Fiona chirps, finally loosening her cuddly-soft vicegrip so she can scoot back and look at May from up front. “Er, unless you actually wanna change it later, but, y’know, that kinda ruins the bit, so…”

Joanna stretches over to lightly poke her faunus girlfriend’s temple, with a sappy whisper of “Smooth,” before getting back to the bluenette. “Explains why you always hammer hard on using your last name instead, and considering how much you hate your parents, that’s... Wait, do they…?”

“What, are you kidding? No. Brothers, no.” Another shadow of dread drags May’s features down. “They’d… Think about everything I’ve ever told you about them, right? How pissed they were I picked the Academy over business school? Act like I need to quarantine after breathing the same air as a Mantler? Real open-minded folks. Fun thought experiment: Imagine what they’d do to me if they found out their precious little heir is… is this.” She gestures to the whole of herself, rather unkindly.

Robyn busies herself by clearing away some of the cracker crumbs and crumpled cans she can reach without bothering to stand. “So, on that note – total shot in the dark here, but I’m gonna assume we’re keeping this on the down low, indefinitely.”

“Do you WANT me to get disowned? Pulled out of the Academy? They can’t know, ever.”

If it would get May away from those wealth-drunk vipers she calls Mom ‘n Dad, Robyn MIGHT say yes, but she can’t be so crass; can’t joke about a team member’s safety like that...

“Gotcha. Though, it’s a bit of a shame we can’t correct the record; Blaze owes me money with three years interest.”

Fiona pulls a spare roll of plastic garbage bags from her semblance-void, and tears one out for Robyn to load up with the clutter. “Blaise, like blonde Blaise downstairs?”

“No, no, Blaze-with-a-Z. Bet me Ⱡ50 my indomitable lesbian magnetism couldn’t net me an all-girl team way back at initiation.” Robyn snorts proudly. “Looks like I still played him for a chump, now didn’t I?”

Still beyond bewildered at the fact nobody’s tried to shove her out the door just yet, May lets her posture go slack, brushing her messy bangs back into place. “So, you’re all…  Seriously, you’re all really okay with this?”

If there were crickets in the dorm, they’d be chirping.

“Should we… NOT be?” asks Joanna.

May’s hands clench reflexively, gripping at air, grasping at straws. “Fuck, I don’t know, maybe? Doesn’t it bug you even a little?”

“What bugs me a little,” Robyn darts in, with a shake of the can-laden trashbag for emphasis, “is that you’d think we’d ever flip on you. When I say this team is like my family, I mean it.”

Fiona gives a chittering laugh behind her hand. “Except for the part where you’re sleeping with half of them, right?”

“...Ahem. And unlike your caviar-swilling birthgivers, I’d like to think we’ll be supportive of our freshly-hatched Bluebird.”

It’s far from the first time Robyn’s tried to stick her with that nickname, which really makes it clash with the ‘newborn’ metaphor, but truth be told, May’s too dazed, too mildly inebriated, and too emotionally shot to nitpick her captain’s semantics.

Too sleepy as well. May’s been an insomniac as long as she can remember, but tonight the siren call of her bunk is crisp and clear. It seems to be a general consensus, with the remainder all giving her encouraging grins, but lulling in unison.

“That’s… Okay. Okay. I get it, we’re… It’s all good. But can we, uh… Can we save the rest of that ‘supporting’ until tomorrow, because…?”

Robyn’s laugh is short, but hearty. “I suppose you’re right. We did have quite the productive evening. Postpone the talking ‘til we’ve had some sleep.” She ties off the trashbag of various party-leavings and chucks it over near the wastebin by the door. “Let’s put a lid on this one, ladies. Captain’s orders.”

Ladies, huh? Plural, containing all parties in attendance. No tacked-on caveats, no exceptions. No ‘Ladies-and-gentleman.’

That’s a new one. Shiny. Fresh. May likes it.

While she lays slumped against the wall of bunk alcoves, lost in contemplation, the others busy themselves with the minutiae of prepping for bed. Fiona flicks off the long-abandoned TV projector and sucks it up into her palm. Robyn and Joanna elbow each other the whole way to the bathroom, and continue flirting thereafter throughout brushing their teeth.

It’s astounding, perplexing, and honestly kinda fucked that such a monumental paradigm shift for May’s entire life just thwipped by in the blink of an eye, and the daily routine rolls right on regardless. How are they like this, making it so effortless to accept her as… her? Being welcoming toward diversity in species and ethnicity is one thing, but this is a different Grimm entirely! Did they know people like her down in Mantle, is it more common there? Or is it just the upbringing that does it, the closeness of a community who can’t survive while holding petty fundamentalist grudges? She has so many questions for them, but only a fraction of those she knows she’ll be bombarded with come morning.

Morning, though. Maybe she doesn’t need to get ready for bed; what’re the odds she’s dreaming even now, and when her dream-bubble pops, she’ll wake to a world where her teammates aren’t absolute saints?

...Meh. If she’s going to spiral back into her worries, the least she can do is swaddle up in her blankets, first. She hops herself out of her roly-poly crouch, bones creaking, and angles herself in a general bathroom direction.

By the time she’s done tending to her own hygiene and steps back out, the lights have been flicked, and toothpaste-flavored kisses are being exchanged between the trio of girlfriends.

She’d say ‘get a room,’ but… this is the only room they’ve got.

Maybe she’s still a bit jealous, standing there, watching them and their collective warmth, but… It’s not as overbearing tonight. She might not be one of them like that, but she’s… she’s more one of them than she’d been a few hours ago.

That counts for something, doesn't it?

Each huntress finishes handling their miscellaneous affairs – scrolls plugged into chargers, night creams applied – and soon are gravitating to their respective bunks.

May settles into her space on the bottom-left with a flop, completely oblivious to the nefarious plans of her upstairs neighbor.

Having already paid her nightly dues to her paramours, Robyn can’t help but feel she’s leaving May out in the cold, and so soon after the grand revelation! That, in her humble, yet always-entirely-correct opinion, cannot stand. Everyone should feel included!

There’s a knock-knock against the frame of the bunks, a ‘Psst,’ and a curious May rolls to the edge of her bed, craning her neck to look above.

Robyn, the insatiable, inveterate rogue that she is, simply cannot help herself. All aglow in the gentle moonlight sneaking through the curtains, loose hair framing her face, she flashes a gigawatt smile, a paralyzing wink, and murmurs, “G’night, Princess.”

May Marigold’s heart vaults into her throat and sticks.

Chapter Text

THOOM.

Robyn Hill’s been feeling a little vexed, lately.

THOOM.

And okay, she’s vexed on a regular, routine basis, this isn’t news to anyone. For instance, her perpetual backburner boil over the disgusting state of inequality and in justice in this miserable frostbitten country? That’s always vexing! But that’s not this.

THOOM.

Also, she’s pretty vexed by the combat class curriculum demanding biannual weapons proficiency drills across the board, with all military regulation weapon styles – Yes, she can handle a rifle with crack-shot accuracy, if she needs to! No, she’d rather avoid it, because it’s a pain in the ass! Or the shoulder. Mainly the shoulder right now, damn. You can tell the recoil on these things is made for the drones, literal and figurative.

“Yeowch, Hill. I’ve literally seen you split arrows before, how’d you even miss? I swear you curved the bullet.”

“Watch it, Overbite, some of us–“

THOOM. Cha-chikk.

“–prefer a weapon with finesse.”

But no, the most recent addition to Robyn’s cluttered vexpile is the past and present state of one particular member of her team, turning her world on its head as of last Friday night. Hence, her recent sleuthing, asking around their other classmates about Marigold’s history.

“Thought it’s because you’re too broke to buy bullets.”

“It can be both things!”

Take for example, Odie Hrossvalr, the stout, fair-haired walrus faunus in the practice range’s next slot over. His subspecies trait, the long, sharpened tusks that jut down a few inches past his jawline, have gotten him erroneously tarred with the brush of being ‘Half-Sabyr’ by racist burnouts coincidentally failing Grimm Taxonomy. Overall, an okay guy, if a bit of a showoff. You get used to the lisp.

Robyn’s got an hour with him for Advanced Marksmanship, and he’s friends with Fiona, but most pertinently, he and May’ve got some mind-numbing Wilderness Survivalism class block together in the mornings, when none of the other girls can keep an eye on her.

“But, seriously, you haven’t seen… anything else strange happen with Marigold? No family gossip making the rounds, no notable bullies, no drama, no… incidents that stand out? Hasn’t fainted in class again, nothing?“

THOOM.

“Nope. I don’t know what to tell ya. Besides the low aura baseline, he’s seemed fine by me, but... it’s not like he ever talks much in the first place? At the end of the day, you’re his team, you know him better than I do.”

The lieutenant left overseeing the drill session calls out a five minute warning, and the trainees scuttle. Practice rifles re-racked, dust packed back in the proper reservoirs, targets tidied up. Odie clears up his space and gives Robyn a weak grin as he takes off.

“Sorry I couldn’t help, though. And hey, when you talk to Fiona – Faunus Fellowship’s meeting got canceled for this month, so let her know, okay? Later!”

“Yeah, yeah, will do. Take care.”

‘You know him better than I do.’

Robyn thought she knew May.

She’s always had a knack for getting a good read on people. She’d figured that three years living, learning, and fighting together was enough time to figure Marigold out, know all her ins and outs, how best to help, how best to manage her needs as a team leader.

Now, though… ever since last weekend – ever since May’s coming-out – Robyn’s been left at a loss. How this actually snuck up on her, she’s got no clue. It’s like every past event, every single quirk or habit or anecdote, has been given a crucial piece of critical context she’d inexplicably, humiliatingly missed, which now casts the last three years, their entire relationship to this point, in a new light entirely.

And it hadn’t always been the chummiest relationship, either – Robyn’s been realizing, in retrospect, just how overly-skeptical she’d been, back in the beginning.

After finally scrounging up the enrollment fees and running the red-tape gauntlet of initiation, making it under the cut her very last year before being aged out of eligibility – before ‘remedial programs’ were her only recourse for a license – Robyn had prayed she’d be done a small mercy of a bearable partner on a half-decent team. Maybe that cutie-pie sheep faunus with whom she’d been trading sly looks all the way through the testing period, or the tall, hunky girl with the green hair and nifty facial markings… they were both from back home, they’d be in her corner, right?

On one hand, she’d gotten the sheep and the hunk – she can thank the All-Knowing Assignment Systems for that much, at least – but being partnered to some stuffy, upjumped Atlesian billionaire’s brat for the next four years of her life instead of EITHER of her fellow Mantlers wasn’t how she’d dreamed the dice would land. He’d already scuttled her hopes for a female four-stack with his presence, and he’d probably spend their entire education cold-shouldering them for being under-city trash, then bail on them to become just another hard-assed Military Huntsman.

...So, that was a little presumptuous. More than a little. Okay, a lot. Sorry, May.

But then again, Marigold had to get snapped up into that stupid, exclusive class track for grooming the General’s prospective future Specialists, so what ELSE was Robyn supposed to think at first?

And hey, in her defense, spending a year sarcastically dubbing the students of SpecOps: Advanced Placement ‘SOAP Scum’ was too good of a crack to pass up – C’mon, it’s witty! And what in the hell was the board thinking with that name? Acronyms, fellas, ever heard of ‘em? – until the ice began started to break around their mysterious Marigold before long.

It’s not as if Robyn were outright jealous or anything – Pride’s a dangerous drug to get addicted to down in Mantle, a luxury for which most can’t afford to pay the price, and besides, she’d rather go skinny dipping off the Solitas coast than ever suit up in service to the Military. That’s not why it bugged her, it’s just…

Atlas loves to stress their students with public grade postings, so she’d SEEN the numbers – Seen ‘Robyn Hill’ tacked right up there in the highest echelons, trading paint with Marigold and Schnee – yet despite Ironwood’s continued obsession with overseeing her progress, with calling her in for ‘counseling,’ despite his effusive praise for her hard work, she’s never even been offered that same shot at preliminary placement, to give her the unparalleled joy at shooting him down!

At first she thought it was just the reek of Mantle on her, while May was squeaky clean, but... no, there’d been Mantle-born specialists in the past. That's what made her switch up her viewpoint, honed on the same two things that ALWAYS keep her at arms length – Her ‘untenable issues with authority,’ and her semblance – the ultimate double-edged sword if Ironwood can’t guarantee absolute loyalty. If he can ‘educate’ the baby socialist out of her by the end of fourth year, enthrall her, indoctrinate her, the Atlas Military could hold the power to wring truth out of any dubiously detained suspect they pleased.

But if Robyn had a mind of her own, a single drop of doubt, she could rob him blind. Pry whatever state secrets she wished from the most privileged minds and highest-ranking officers in the Kingdom. Maybe she's a conspiracy theorist, maybe she's tooting a bit too much on her own horn, but... Ironwood is a self-assured, pragmatic ass, not a complete idiot.

Meanwhile, May – well, ‘Marigold’ – has always been a mite less disruptive. A troubled prodigy with a dangerous selflessness born of nigh-nonexistent self-worth, raised and steeped in the pompous culture of the Atlesian aristocracy, craving validation and a place to belong, and with the power of short-to-wide-range invisibility projection, of all things? Of course she’s a prime candidate for the General’s personal, not-so-secret Secret Police project. Break her in, and the military’ll be sneaking their very own black-bag squads through city streets in broad daylight, and literally disappearing people on a whim.

All the more reason for Robyn to never let that happen. All the more reason for her team to win this little game of tug-of-war, and make sure Special Operative Marigold never comes to be.

In those first years, they’d settled for feeling out her motivations, and finding she wasn’t all as gung-ho about The Establishment as they’d feared. But back then, she’d still been so convinced that she could be ‘one of the good ones,’ and ‘change the system from the inside,’ and the three of them had to pin back the urge to laugh right in her face. May’d meant well those times she said it, but… She hasn’t lived Mantle.

May hasn’t watched the military police turn a blind eye to its suffering from down at ground level. Hasn’t watched the armored boot of an Atlas trooper come down on the skull of a teenage faunus, handcuffed face-down in the slush, all for fitting a profile. Hasn’t seen the crackdowns on the Crater. Watched the military budget skyrocket while civic infrastructure down below crumbles, and responses to Grimm incursions grow slower by the year.

Robyn, for one, is not going to let her partner go off gargling boot-polish, not after all the time they’ve shared together, and especially not if it means spending the rest of her life hiding what she’s only just unveiled to her team. They’re going to give her a home, to give her the support she’d never truly get out of an ironed uniform and Ironwood’s praise.

When it comes to what all’d been ailing May, sure, that bit of drastic action last weekend helped find the hidden wound she’d desperately concealed, but just knowing about it isn’t going to magically make it all better.

They still need to suture it up, stop the bleeding, apply some anesthetic to ease things up – the short term necessaries. Help undo some of the immediate damage done suffering it in silence, make sure she’s not compromising her health with more self-sabotage.

Then comes disinfecting. Long-term oversight. Making sure she feels like sticking with them. That she doesn’t go hiding her hurts from them again, not when they could help.

Okay, okay, the medical metaphor’s flimsy – especially applied to a huntress with an activated aura and years of practice channeling it for healing – but… but it’s a work in progress!

And maybe, maybe Robyn’s obsessing a bit. Maybe her ego’s taken a wild sucker-punch for not noticing sooner, for not putting the pretty obvious pieces together about her partner, and saving three extra years of grief for the four of them. She just can’t get it out of her head, the contrast of one short night – How utterly defeated May’d been, before surrendering a hard-held truth, how shocked that they didn’t... what, immediately suddenly start verbally abusing her? Kick her out of the room, make her start sleeping on the common room couches? Spam it all over the Academy’s CCTS bulletin? This team is my family, Robyn’s said a thousand-some times. Is that sort of thing normal for a family, in May’s eyes?

...And the fuck kind of family are the Marigolds, to let her feel that way?

To hell with them, though. As far as she’s concerned, May’s part of her flock, and from the talks they’ve had in recent days, she knows her girlfriends agree.

Robyn’s ruminating occupies her ‘til she hits the cafeteria. It’s only a short trek from the range, which means it’s not that long she has to loiter in line smothering in the smells of the ‘luxury’ dishes outside her meticulous budget.

The stipend of lien on her account from the basic student scholarship’ll never leave her wanting for food in general, but it’s always a daily reminder of her place in society waiting in line for mashed potatoes and late-late-breakfast biscuits, while the wealthy pick over their lobster and wagyu beef. She’ll concede the point these are still biscuits ‘n potatoes prepared by a high-class culinary staff, but the aftertaste of insult is still baked into the poor-people plates.

May’s absence is deeply felt as always; she’s been the one to grab the team some classier cuisine to pass around. No cheesecake slice today.

Having apparently been divested of their usual table by an energetic horde of first-years, Robyn stakes her claim on a spot over by the massive glass windows at the far end of the mess hall. Joanna’s fast to find her at the new rendezvous point, but she has to wave Fiona down as the sheep faunus aimlessly wanders a bit in search of her friends, ears wiggling worriedly.

“Fi! Get over here. I’m calling a meeting.”

“Meeting? Oh, is this a team meeting? Should I get M–“ Fiona catches herself at the last second, cranking the knob down to a whisper as she settles in with her tray. “Should I go find May?”

“Nope, just a good old fashioned Girlfriend meeting. Plus, she and the rest of Advanced Jackbooting 301 already packed up for the airships third period. They’ve got that whole hide-‘n-seek game out in the mountains for Midterms.”

“It’s ‘search-and-destroy,’ Robs,” mumbles Joanna, around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

Same difference! Robyn shrugs off the unconstructive criticism and sallies forth. “I got a good view of the landing pads from Aura Theory, so I saw her ship out. Guess who she’s paired up with. Just guess.”

“Is it Wint–“

“Of course it’s Winter Schnee! …And, sure, a pair of underclassmen I didn’t know, but… Schnee.” She growls the name as if it’s personally responsible for running over her grandmother with a snowplow. “They act like they can’t stand each other, but they’re always shacked up, any class they’re both in. You don’t think those two’re…?”

Joanna breaks off a bit of her sausage-and-egg biscuit to dunk in her potatoes and gravy. “Not a chance. Still say Schnee’s got a raging will-they-won’t-they with that one senior. The pissy mohawk chick, you know who I mean. Seriously, the way they look at each other after a match? That’s hatefuck energy.”

“So, like, the same Robyn gave YOU after the first time you floored her?”

Fiona receives a crumb flicked into her forehead for her sassy – if shamefully accurate – quip, but that’s as far as the food fight goes; Mantlers know better than most not to waste whatever’s edible.

Robyn calls the meeting back to order with the rap of a fork against her tray.

“BUT! ...But I digress. While fresh hot goss is always tantalizing, that’s not why I’ve arranged this crucial meeting of the minds.”

“Finally.” Fiona bleps her little pink tongue. Robyn resists the temptation to lurch across the table and kiss it.

“I’m thinking about tomorrow. Girls’ Night’s always been rolled in with Date Night ever since we both crushed on this beefcake over here…” And at this point, Robyn unsubtly grabs for Joanna’s hard-earned bicep and gives a teasing squeeze. The beefcake rolls her eyes, but a grin cracks its way through.

“But, that was when Girls was synonymous with Girlfriends. Now…”

Fiona finishes a hearty chug from her drink carton, coming out sporting an adorable milk-moustache. “Oh! Now there’s May! ...Right.”

“Exactly. And to top it off, she’s got no uppity Spec-Ops circlejerk tomorrow night; she’ll have the rest of the day free once they fly her back in. And I know we already had plans: hook us an airship for a ride down home to Mantle, make a date of it–”

It’s a cinch to follow their leader’s line of logic. Joanna finishes up her biscuit and brushes some crumbs off the lapels of her uniform. “But now, you wanna take her along.”

“I’m leaving it up to you two whether you’d want to lose some private time over this, but…”

Brazenly abusing her privilege as captain – or possibly, just to further annoy her girlfriend – Robyn steals a scoop of Joanna’s leftover gravy-soaked potatoes.

“Mm. Look, I feel bad about last week. I’d hope she’s better off in the long run, not having to hide it around the three of us, but… Going right back to calling her… that around everyone else, acting like nothing happened? We only just made some headway, I don’t want her backsliding.”

Fiona, in the meantime, slyly sucks up Robyn’s sprinkle-studded dessert brownie into her palm. “I know, it’s awful. I get we’ve gotta do it to keep her safe, but still!”

“Which brings me back around to my cunning plan. What say we smuggle our dear dreary May down home for an evening, and see if we can crack that shell a little further?” Robyn clears her throat. “Maybe scope ourselves out a store with a safe enough changing room, and… have ourselves a little dress-up? Try and give her one nice night, the way things should be, if she didn’t have to worry about all this.”

A certain sheep faunus’ ovine ears wiggle with glee. “Oh my gods. We could give her a May-keover!”

“Not to rain on your parade here, but d’you even think she’s interested in pulling a stunt like that?” Joanna adds flatly, sobering up the group. “You saw how terrified she was about us finding out. Or, shit, she might just be too tired after screwing around in the tundra all night t’wanna go anywhere.”

Only now does Robyn notice the conspicuous absence of her precious brownie – one of the cheapest desserts affordable on the grand hierarchy of lunch menu options, no less! – and levels a scolding gaze at the coyly grinning Fiona before moving on.

“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? We’ve still got time to feel out some plans for ourselves, make a few contingencies… Can text her tonight once she’s through playing stealth commando.”

Fiona fidgets with her milk carton, popping the tab open and closed. “Hope she says yes…”

“So do I, Lambchop. With how long she’d been keeping scarce on us… we’ve got a lot of lost time to make-up for.”

The table falls deathly silent, despite the lunchroom din.

“...Uh, wait, was that– Were you trying to make another ‘May’ pun? Like May-ke up? Because I kinda already just did that?”

“What, no! ‘Make up’ and ‘make-up!’ For her face? Jo, back me up here! Clean delivery, right?”

Jo, her constant backup, does not back her up. The heartless, humorless philistine that she is!

When her undeniably brilliant wordplay’s given lackluster reviews, Robyn asserts her maturity as the eldest by blowing both her girlfriends a terse raspberry.

“My point is, we can come up with any old excuse to get her out of our hair whenever we wanna do date-stuff and get frisky.  This is different – And don’t you two tell me it wouldn’t be fun to see if this won’t loosen her up just a little bit more. Maybe let us see the real her.”

Joanna chuckles. “Alright, alright, I’m in. I’d pay good money to see her trying heels for the first time. And on the iced-up pavement, too...”

“That’s good!” says Robyn. “Beeeecause we might still have to chip in for a few things here ‘n there. Anything from stores she wouldn’t be able to bluff to Mom ‘n Pop Marigold about if they ever scrape her accounts. She can pay us back springing for everything else.”

“What would fit her, even? Like, what are her sizes?” Fiona wonders aloud. “It’s not like we ever asked.”

“It’s not like we ever had a reason to ask.” Joanna notes, with an increasingly sinister grin. “Unless you’re volunteering to take her measurements? You’re the only one small enough we could stuff in a changing booth with ‘er.”

Fiona pinkens, and struggles to stretch far enough to play-bop her buffest girlfriend on the head. “S-shut up! And don’t act like you wouldn’t get embarrassed too! ...In fact, maybe I’ll just have her steal your clothes! All you tall people probably fit the same!”

Joanna, for all her bluster, stumbles over the momentary picture of a sleepy May wobbling around the dorm in nothing but a nightshirt pinched from her collection, some worn-out band tee with a stretched neckline slipping off a shoulder, May drowsily rubbing at her eye with a hand lost in a too-long sleeve – Shit.

Robyn doesn’t intervene immediately; watching her loves lovingly fillet one another is one of her favorite shows. Still, they can’t afford to get too distracted, and it’s both bad taste and a total waste to make jokes about a scantily-clad May without the selfsame girl in attendance to fuss up a storm.

“Anyway! ...On the chance she isn’t interested, isn’t comfortable, or isn’t up for anything but flopping into bed tomorrow, let’s brainstorm some simple stuff we can do around the dorm.”

Robyn can already see Fiona starting to sink into her seat, so it does her heart good to watch the faunus bounce right back with a smile once she delivers the “But – But, in the case she is… Let’s plan ourselves a nice night on the town, shall we?”

May’s fucking freezing.

Her remaining aura might stave off frostbite, but it’s still unpleasant. And sure, she could theoretically crawl a bit closer towards the trashcan fire the other trainees have set up in the center of the old warehouse, or crack into the bag of disposable heating pads, but that means being around people, or making noise that draws attention, and she’s only just gotten some quiet time to herself by volunteering to keep first watch.

By the end of the day, they’d seized their target objective with little fanfare, herself and her temporary team for the Specialist-course practical exam.

The obligatory matchup of herself and Winter had been rounded out with a pair of freshmen, instructed to study the older students. Feasibly, an exercise for the younger pair in following orders, and the older set in giving them. In reality, an unhelpful, leaderless mess, with a distinct skew in skill levels.

Deployed before any of them could have a proper lunch, the various ‘strike teams’ were chucked out of moving airships over the mountains, each assigned their own area of operations. As per the Professor’s rant, they’d seized a series of small outposts, then using the clues left therein, triangulated the position of the trashy abandoned SDC warehouse gussied up as an enemy base.

Final orders: Clear hostiles, capture and hold the nonspecific high-value target – A dirty bomb? A stolen drone AI core gone berserk? Who cares! – from further fake soldiers, or real Grimm, until retrieval the following morning. And rather than drag actual soldiers into the mix and limit the students to nonlethal force, the ‘OpFor’ is once again composed of rusty tin soldiers.

Apparently, retrofitting an entire surplus battalion of outdated AK-90 drones with bulky, experimental, state-of-the-art thermal detection scanners just because one student in the testing pool happens to have an outright invisibility semblance still isn’t worth the bump in the Academy budget.

Ergo, rather than crafting a sharp strategy on the fly to execute with tremendous professional precision, the final portion of the exam boiled down to sheer boredom; May maintaining her invisibility field, whilst the trainees lazily wandered from guard to guard, wedging weapons into neck-joints or power couplings with all the vim and vigor of a senior citizens’ bingo night.

Hell, they didn’t even have to use any Dust.

Only reason they can’t crack into the supply to get a few extra bonfires going is because Winter’s gotten herself convinced they might all get double-bonus cherry-on-top marks and a fun sticker on their after-action report if they show they’ve completed their task with minimal resource expenditure.

Not like anybody’ll be able to tell if it’s boneheaded or brilliant ‘til Professor Pumice flies through for pickup at sunrise, which… at this time of year…

Ugh, Brothers above, they’ll be here ‘til 10AM, at least. Screw the restrictions on loadout gear, May should’ve brought, like… a fucking book, or at least coursework for another class. Between the cracked moon’s light flooding through the far wall’s line of high windows, or the smaller rip in the rusty, corrugated metal wall she’s using as a sniper’s perch, she wouldn’t have a problem seeing.

At least she’s got a bit of space, now. Winter’s designated first-year has had the sense to mind her own business, but this Amin kid they’d stuck her with is a bit too thirsty for praise and validation, in a way May staunchly refuses to acknowledge is a possible reflection on a certain shard of her subconscious.

That, and he kept calling her ‘sir’ every other breath, which, like… fuck that, obviously?

She’d been half-inclined to snap and gripe at the guy to stop following her around like a damn puppy-dog, ‘til she remembered his wagging tail. Scrubbed that euphemism pretty quick; Fiona’d have her ass for that one if she ever found out, accidental faux pas or otherwise.

Huh. Fiona. Wonder if she’s still up. If any of the team’s still up.

Maybe she could text them just to see? May fiddles around in her pocket for her scroll, and failing that, around under the edges of her improvised canvas bedroll to find where it’d fallen. There it is.  She can’t kill time with any games or make any actual calls, not if she wants the battery to last ‘til the operation’s over, but texting her friends won’t hurt, yeah?

Could even ask if… they’d wanna, like, do anything tomorrow. Just anything. Something to make up for the mind-numbing of this last week, the stress, this whole pain-in-the-ass examina–

Bzzz! Bzzz!

Sweet fucking gods, don’t startle a girl like that!

She realizes she must’ve grunted while otherwise making a dumbass of herself fumbling her scroll, because there’s an immediate rustling half the room away: that dog faunus guy shooting up and alert so fast he’s tossed his uniform beret right off onto the cement.

“See something out there, sir?” calls Marrow Amin, too damn earnestly to get that pissed at him. He’s already reaching for his weapon by the time May waves him off.

“Nngh… No. Go back to sleep.” May pinches the bridge of her nose and rubs it. “Or…  ‘guarding the objective,’ or whatever.”

Ah, the objective, the all-important pile of uniform metal crates tagged with neon yellow safety paint and tracking beacons. Because a stray Arctic Beowolf is gonna be so interested in that, and they still haven’t seen a single round of ‘reinforcements’ from the drones.

Amin has the fucking gall – or innocence, or gallnocence, to salute her. “Affirmative, sir!” Stoppit. Stop. Cease. “Returning to, uh! Returning to task!”

May’s pretty sure the only reason he’s quieting down instead of pursuing the matter is because that other first-year’s hissing something gritty and grousey at him for waking her up, and Winter’s wintry gaze is the icing on that cake.

Whatever, time to see what the buzz was about.

[Robyn’s_Roost] – CURRENT CHANNEL: [#Chat]

>>[MamaBird]: Hey. @LittleBoyBlue

MamaBird has sent a PING!

>>[MamaBird]: Actually wait, hold on

MamaBird has changed user @LittleBoyBlue -> @Mayflower

>>[BoPeep]: lmao

>>[Mayflower]: What? Excuse you, what?

>>[MamaBird]: You had a whole week to change it yourself! Too late, executive action.

>>[Tiny]: Heh. Its cute

>>[Mayflower]: Don’t encourage this, Jo.

>>[BoPeep]: i know what im calling her from now on!

>>[Mayflower]: I could strangle all of you and make it look like an act of the gods.

>>[MamaBird]: No threatening my datemates, sourpuss. By the by, you got any plans tomorrow night?

>>[Mayflower]: I refuse to dignify that nickname with an answer. Also, no. I don’t.

>>[MamaBird]: Great! So, you wouldn’t have any objections to, say…

>>[BoPeep]: coming down 2 mantle to hang w/ us and letting us dress you up super pretty???

>>[MamaBird]: An experimental outing to explor-

>>[MamaBird]: Nevermind, she already covered it.

>>[Tiny]: Subtle, Fi.

May recoils like the words themselves’ve stung her face, and she’s pretty sure she can feel her team’s eyes staring expectantly at her, straight through the screen of her scroll.

It’s not a disdain for the notion, no. Not when she’d only just been craving plans, craving distraction, something to look forward to and help cull her traitorous thoughts. It’s that instinctive fear of vulnerability, of discovery, of inevitable humiliation. The fear of being set up and pranked, of having her entire life blown apart over this small, frail, hidden part of herself.

But that’s just the reflex.

This last week, her team’s been more than conscientious, if a bit clumsy in their questioning, trying to feel out just what she’s comfortable with in the confines of their dorm. She’s seen the genuine regret in their eyes the times they’ve stumbled over remembering her real name in private, and the bitter disdain for the state of society each time they’re forced to misname her on purpose in public.

Now, they want to bring her down to their home again, and make her feel more at home in herself.

And besides… she’s known these girls for three years, now. The first might’ve been a rough adjustment period, but… she’d trust them with her life. Trusts them with something even more important than her life, in fact: her true self. Maybe it really is just a Mantle thing to be so strangely accepting… And brave. And hot, and–

Fuck it.

Fuck it, she’s going.

She’s already exhausted. And even assuming her racing mind and restless, shitty body lets her tap out for a few winks in between now and the airship exfil, she’ll probably need another nap facedown in her bunk back on campus.

But the thought of spending some time down in the increasingly-familiar streets of Mantle with her three favorite people on Remnant, actually getting to dress, to act, to live the sort of way she’s spent long, lonely nights dreaming she could?

Even if the warning lights in the back of her brain are blaring, even if she knows there’s a threat they could stumble into someone who’d recognize her… This one’s a risk worth taking.

May stumbles out of her fugue and thumbs at her scroll, catching up on the message log she’s missed in the meantime.

>>[BoPeep]: may? you still there?

>>[Tiny]: See, you killed her

>>[Mayflower]: Fine.

>>[BoPeep]: yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>>[Mayflower]: But won’t I be fourth-wheeling your date?

>>[MamaBird]: Four wheels? We get bumped up from being a tricycle, I see no downsides here.

>>[Tiny]: And if we want to make out you can just turn around

>>[Mayflower]: With how loud you swap spit, I’ll have to cover my ears, too.

>>[BoPeep]: we just wanna have you along!

>>[BoPeep]: its always fun when we get to take you back home with us!

>>[Tiny]: I’ll second that

>>[MamaBird]: Thirded, naturally. Hold up why is it giving me the typo squiggles on thirded?

>>[MamaBird]: Seconded is a word, why not thirded? I’m calling bull.

May is helpless to prevent the stupid snort of silent laughter that escapes her, the fondness for her team and their ridiculousness filling her up with enough heat to forget about her freezing extremities. Being wanted is something special.

Fixated on her scroll, she doesn’t even catch the approach of her provisional partner until her personal bubble is popped.

“Something amusing?” Winter dryly asks, in as jovial a tone as one can ever expect of a Schnee. May grows acutely aware of the stupid smile she’d allowed to curl her lips, and promptly scraps it, stowing her scroll before it can be read. Winter withdraws her own and taps at the alarms she’s set.

“It’s time for next watch. If we’ve seen no reinforcements as of yet, I’ve got no doubt they’re saving them for the early morning hours, when we’ve presumably lowered our guard.” She regards May with a sort of commiseration, gesturing to her slipshod setup by the crack in the wall. “I’ll be taking over, so you should rest. Ideally, somewhere without a subzero draft?”

That’s as close to ‘I don’t want you catching a cold’ May’ll be getting, so she takes it… Albeit not without the slathering of sarcasm obligatory to their relationship. “So sweet of you to care, Winny,” she remarks as she stands, bundling up her bedroll and stalking off. She doesn’t need to look back to feel how hard she’s being flipped off. “Have a nice shift.”

The ‘somewhere without a draft’ ends up being the warehouse control center, up a flight of rickety rust-red metal stairs to the second level. Once, underpaid middle-managers loitered here to overlook even worse-paid Mantlers breaking their backs hauling crates of Dust. Now it’s just May and a pair of the AK-90’s they’d busted up for the exam, which she swiftly kicks into the corner to make space for her bedroll.

Dropping roughly onto the canvas, May sets her rucksack at the end to serve as a cushion, but first unzips the thing. She rummages out a handful of disposable heating pads, and begins the cumbersome process of cracking them open, giving them a shake, and quickly stuffing the things into the underlayer of her clothes – pockets, gloves, small of the back… screw it, a pair for the boots, too. Not like anyone’s going to nag her about littering the place up with the packaging.

As she finally lets her head fall to rest against her rucksack-pillow, her pocket vibrates again. Another scroll alert? The ping message didn’t have their stupid jokey usernames, so it’s not from their group chat. Must be private.

[Direct Message] @Marigold ←→ @RobynHill

>>[RobynHill]: Truth be told, the whole thing was my idea.

>>[RobynHill]: So don’t feel pressured to do it just because Fi’s thrilled as can be.

>>[RobynHill]: Still okay to say no if you’re not comfortable, I can break it to the others.

>>[Marigold]: Trying to get rid of me already?

>>[Marigold]: I said I’d go, so I’m going. I wanted something to do, anyway, so. Whatever.

>>[RobynHill]: Well, my semblance won’t work over the scroll, so I’m taking your word for it.

>>[RobynHill]: We’re about to tuck in over here. I can’t keep watch and nag if you don’t sleep, so...

>>[RobynHill]: Just get some when you can. Goodnight, Princess.

Forget the trashcan fires and heating pads, the burning in May’s face could heat the whole warehouse by its lonesome.

It’s no fair – it was always just a begrudging jab at her wealthy upbringing and her slot as the youngest back when it was ‘Little Prince!’ The kind she’d roll her eyes at! But now that it’s ‘Princess,’ why’s it striking her to the core and turning all her battle-hardened emotional defenses to pudding?

This… she can’t let this happen.

Even if her teammates’ve been exceedingly chill about the situation… catching feelings is just stupid, just an easy way to get hurt. They’d never, not with her. She’s always stifled any such thoughts before, no reason to stop now.

Ugh. Crap. Calm down, play it cool. Deflect.

>>[Marigold]: Again? Thought I was ‘Mayflower’ now.

>>[RobynHill]: Shush, you know you love it.

...If she admits to it, she’s screwed. If she admits she doesn’t half-mind the thought of being Robyn’s princess – being Fi and Jo’s princess too, for that matter – she’s signing her own death warrant here and now. But if she bluffs, she’ll get called on it; she’s up against an infuriatingly captivating human lie detector.

There’s no choice, no other options in such dire straits. May engages in a daring maneuver of subtle psychological warfare, as befitting a top student of SpecOps Prep!

>>[Marigold]: ...

>>[Marigold]: Good night.

[@Marigold is now OFFLINE.]

May stuffs her scroll into the pocket of her coat, rolls onto her side, and buries her face in her hands.

Gods, she’s fucking doomed.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” grumbles May, arms flung tightly around herself. They’re still up in climate-controlled Atlas, waiting at the Academy airship docks, so it’s likely a streak of nerves that’s ailing her moreso than the wind chill.

“Ah-ah-ah! You made it official, remember?” Fiona says brightly, whipping a piece of paper from her semblance and flapping it in the air between them.

Scrawled on a sheet torn straight from her school notebooks is a dubious recreation of a legal document, jotted down in Fiona’s handwriting with forest-green ink.

[I, MAY MARIGOLD, being of sound mind and body and stuff, do fully and wholeheartedly agree to go down to Mantle to have fun and buy cute clothes and get some tasty dinner and just have a good time with my best friends, FIONA THYME, JOANNA GREENLEAF, and ROBYN HILL, under penalty of making us them sad if you I don’t.]

...The signature at the bottom is, in its entirety, illegible. A drunken, one-eyed mine prospector would possess neater penmanship. Unsurprising, being as Fiona’d forced the thing under May’s hand only a minute after her stumbling, sleep-deprived return to the dorm just before lunch.

Four A.M... It had taken until four in the morning for the first round of robotic reinforcements to arrive at May’s testing site, and snap the frozen trainees back to battle stations. Their initial assault had been so simple as to set a low bar for the rest of the test’s difficulty, but the attacking drones sought to raise  it to the point of demanding actual effort.

May’s semblance is perfect for infiltration, misdirection, and assassination, but being stuck on defense drops its utility significantly, once the element of surprise is snuffed out. While Winter, what’s-her-face, and Amin held the warehouse loading gate, May burnt her aura down to the dregs trudging out through the snow and sleet, chipping away at their back lines.

Her four-hour nap and subsequent chugging of the closest caffeinated beverage in reach have assured her aura levels are, at the very least, on the upper, yellow-ier end of orange. Not exactly the best, and a far cry from combat ready, but neither should it be a problem for a quick jaunt downtown this evening, especially if they stick close to the commercial sectors. Last week’s blizzard blew out a good three or four heating grid hubs, but main storefront strips’ve been shored up in the meantime, far faster than the neighborhoods out near the wall. Priorities, right?

May is understandably antsy as they wait for their ride, even more than the very first time the team had convinced the cream of Atlas’ crop to come down and kick around in the slush with them. Though a May-keover – Fiona can’t let the limp pun go, and no one has the heart to shut her down – is the key point on the itinerary, she’s starting out swaddled in her usual casual-outing style of ‘don’t acknowledge my existence’ androgyny. Generic non-graphic pullover, gender-neutral earth tones, not too bright, but not too dark…

Bright would be Fiona. Beyond her enthusiasm, her, big, bold, puffy green coat makes her out to be a vibrant patch amid all the understated tones common to Solitas. Also: makes her look eminently squishable, and her two girlfriends have already exploited that fact to justify their hugginess.

Like Joanna, lifting the poor faunus off her feet just now, Fiona limply kicking her feet in the air and giggling as the taller woman compresses all that puff and ploof tight to her chest. Since May’d already called dibs on sweatshirts with her dysphoria hoodie, Joanna’s seen fit to come out swinging with all the flair of a rugged Dust-bike rider, her black leather motorcycle jacket padded enough for warmth, but doing nothing to hide her physique.

Extending her arms to take her own turn with Fiona, Robyn easily accepts the bundle of sunshine once Jo passes her over. Robyn’s long, navy winter peacoat looks like it cost a couple thousand lien more than it actually did, another trophy in her cabinet of thrift shop achievements. If she weren’t so vocal and proud about being from Mantle, she’d fit right in with the glamour of Atlas. She lets Fiona down with a short laugh, burying her nose in curly white locks.

Gods, these girls are something else. How in the fuck am I ever supposed to measure up?

It occurs to May that she’s gawking. It also occurs that despite their momentous plans, this isn’t really that far off business as usual. The three older girls all effortlessly vibing together, and distant, dreary Marigold dragging her feet not far behind.

Her thoughts leap to how she’d gotten ticked at that Marrow guy last night – if anyone’s really following people around like a lost puppy, it’s her; shyly eyeing these walking wellsprings of emotional warmth with her tail between her legs, always chasing the older girls like she’d absorb that ephemeral something they have if she just sticks near enough.

She knows, she knows to some degree this is just the Bad Thoughts talking, but it doesn’t help with that feeling of otherness, that feeling of being the piece that doesn’t belong with the rest of the set. Back during initiation, she’d strained her brain trying to figure just how-and-why the hell the system had grouped her of all people with a gaggle of late-entry Mantle girls. She’s had three years to bitterly bat some answers around in her head; that following Atlas’ standard for statistically balanced teams, therein lies the implicit notion that one of ‘him’ could compensate for the presumed gap in skill between Atlesian prodigies and the less fundamentally privileged 'late bloomers'.

Turns out the only real late bloomer here was her.

May’s snapped out of her sullenness when a loud gasp sounds out to her side; Fiona’s faunus ears seeming to pick up something the humans have yet to hear, and scampering to peer over the railing at the edge of the dock.

“Is that it? It looks like that’s it…” Fiona says thoughtfully to herself, then: “Yep, that’s it! Ride’s here, everyone!”

The mid-sized Atlesian passenger airship finishes its graceful arc down onto the landing zone, as bright orange holographic letters – “Waste of Dust,” mutters Robyn, not for the first time – warn pedestrians to clear the area and allow debarking. The students aboard shuffle out from the ship, making way for those just starting their humble pilgrimage down to Mantle. Mostly natives heading back to familiar streets, with the occasional pack of snide, carefree upper-city partiers looking to indulge in the low-cover clubs, dirtier dives, and overblown tingle of danger the poorer community below can offer them.

The team waits for most of the mob to move out of their way before starting towards the ramp, Joanna pinching fingers in her mouth and whistling to snag May’s attention. “Oi! You coming, or just planning to shimmy down the tether cables?”

May takes a deep breath.

Here goes nothing.

“Everyone go ahead and set an alarm,” Robyn orders, glancing at the rarely-reliable daily departure schedule as the team hops off the boarding ramp. “Doubt we’ll split up, but in case we do, I’d prefer we hit the airpad before the last shuttle.”

The cold streets of Mantle smell like destitution, disenfranchisement, and a hint of antifreeze.

Smells like home, for better or worse.

Fiona skips and spins ahead of the pack, her earnestness contagious enough to put some pep in their collective step. This is gonna be a fun night, she just knows it – The very first time they’ve got May with them, and not just ‘Marigold!’ And it’s not like their dates without her fourth-wheeling have been lame or anything, but this is just… exciting!

After all, even accounting for all their trips down over the years, there are still so many firsts left for May, and Fiona’s happy she and her girlfriends can be there to see it! The three of them have always gotten a drip feed of raw amusement watching May discover their birthplace like a wide-eyed tourist. It’s silly! Mantle isn’t the kind of place to GET tourists; even Vacuo probably sees more interkingdom leisure visits! ...And it’s Vacuo!

Some spots might take longer than others. Fiona catches herself remembering they’ve still never taken May down to the Crater yet, down to her old family home, but… she has to admit, there’s not so much to do there compared to the other districts, unless you wanna go sightseeing in Povertyland. Once or twice, she’s worried if the Crater might finally be what puts May off of Mantle, but they know her now. The time they’d taken her by the fenced-off cordon around the rim, they’d seen a potent disgust darken her eyes. Not towards the people below, but the ones above who keep them there. The ones who raised her to think that’s just the way it goes, that it’s where they belong.

Fiona just… really-really hopes they can convince May to come down here with them after graduation. Like, permanently, and stuff.

‘Cuz as much as Robyn’s still got that niggling, wiggling worry-worm about May having a change of heart and shooting straight into military service after graduation, that she’ll shake Ironwood’s hand and accept whatever commission’s on offer – and let’s be real, it’d be that spiffy new AceOps squad – Fiona’s not as nervous. May already wasn’t who they dreaded she’d be from the start, and she’s come so far in the time they’ve known her, too!

At the same time… Keeping her out of an officer’s uniform isn’t quite the same as keeping the team together. She could always just… take her license and dip, catch the first airship out of Solitas, go move somewhere less oppressive in climate and culture. Like Vale! It’s a little selfish, she knows, but… Fiona really doesn’t ever want May to leave.

And after the events of last weekend (so far dubbed ‘the incident,’ ‘the revelation,’ ‘that thing that happened,’ with little consistency) she knows Robyn and Joanna think so, too! All their other worries like midterm cramming, strategizing for this year’s Vytal Festival, or just the rigors of enduring Atlas’ bullshit kinda got booted to the back burner. She hasn’t been sticking her fingers in as many pies as Robyn, but like, Fiona gets it? May’s been on her mind so much, too! Maybe she’s just feeling protective?

Right now, the most they can do is make more happy memories here for her, and hope for the best.

Fiona skids to a halt at a street corner and waits for their traveling band to reassemble. Here, the evening’s branching paths present themselves.

“So!” Robyn pipes in, pressing the button for the crosswalk and spinning to lean against the pole. “Options. We wanna get some grub in us first? Then clothes, then putz around a bit and find ourselves some fun? Or putz-clothes-food?”

“Clothes first,” replies May. “I don’t want to feel bloated squeezing into stuff that already might not fit right…”

Joanna gives her a shoulder-bump. “Like you couldn’t stand to put on a little weight, y’beanpole. I could snap you like a twig if I wanted.”

“And your point is? You could snap anyone like a twig! You could snap the fucking Headmaster like a twig, and he’s half-robot!”

“Pretty sure the term’s ‘cyborg,’ but go off, I guess.”

“Bitch.”

“Brat.”

Always content to enjoy the background noise of their silly bickering, Fiona pops open her scroll and starts comparing notes with their leader. “So, where are you thinking?”

“Well, we need… somewhere low traffic, ideally somewhere that won’t keep thorough enough records to snoop, if it comes down to it,” Robyn rattles off, tapping away some disqualified venues. “And not far from some half-decent food.”

Fiona hums and nods along, similarly scratching off a few of what constitute Mantle’s trendier stores. “There’s always the C and T? Plus, that’s like, only a quarter-sector from The Pig Site, and we’ve never dragged May there, have we?”

The WALK light blinks green with none of the pomp and circumstance of Atlas crosswalks, no pleasant musical tone, no hard-light signage.

“No, and there’s a first time for everything.” Pocketing her scroll with a flourish, Robyn lifts off the pole and proudly announces, “Ladies, we have our heading!”

The general décor of the East Mantle Chic & ‘Tiques is a garish pileup of clashing styles, shooting for a bohemian air to justify the lack of consistency across the aisles of used furniture and apparel.

The lateness of the hour’s given them a fairly empty store to work with, which serves their purpose well. Personal enjoyment aside, this is intended to be for May’s comfort, and strangers giving her the shifty-eye is hardly conducive to that goal.

Robyn steers the team to the womens’ section, ignoring the distant sigh of the gum-chewing teen working the till, already dreading the vast amounts of items she might have to re-rack.

They’ve never before gone clothes shopping on a trip where May’s along for the ride, and Fiona wonders if they’d missed out on another potential clue. Whether she’d have just griped about the wait, or taken a genuine interest… One they could use to pinpoint the sorts of fashions she’d actually like to wear, because right now, they’re starting with squat!

Like, May’s always either been in the Academy men’s uniform, which she hates, tailored suits, which she hates, or the baggiest, scruzziest, most ‘don’t pay any attention to me’ getups she owns, which… she might not hate, but are little more than a defensive countermeasure rather than something she actually likes!

The race begins in a flurry of fabric, May left sluggishly nosing around a rack of outdated skirts while the others rush to gather anything they can loosely eyeball as a decent fit, both in form and fashion.

May just rolls her eyes as Fiona wanders back to hold a blouse up to her body, silently gesturing for her to stand still. “I said I’d let you all pick me one outfit. ONE! I’m not trying to get a whole wardrobe right off the bat, where would I even put it?!”

Fiona, who at this very moment carries within her semblance enough of the team’s assorted junk to fill a two-car garage, stares at her blankly. Unblinking. Like one of those haunted dolls that always somehow end up at these same sorts of stores.

“Oh, now this, this I can see,” Robyn says to herself, and Joanna snorts out a laugh from where she leans over a rack of ripped jeans, giving a thumbs-up before returning to her own search.

May’s already blurted out a “No way, when would I even–?” before Fiona can get on tip-toe and see over into the next aisle over, where Robyn’s admiring one obscenely sparkly, ankle-length silver evening dress. With sequins.

“For when you take us out to one of those million-lien-a-plate fake charity get-togethers, of course!” purrs Robyn, holding up the hanger to match it with a fussy May. “We’ll be your plus-three.”

“One: even my parents wouldn’t blow four million on a meal. Two: Maybe it is pretty, but it would look like trash on me, and thirdly: What in the hell would you all be wearing? Do you even have formalwear?”

“Could just wear our dress uniforms. Perks of our militarized hell-state and its schoolgirl-to-soldier pipeline.” Even as she reluctantly returns the dress to the rack, Robyn brandishes a coy grin.  “Unless you’d like to see us all in glittery evening gowns? You’re the socialite; you could always pick our poison for us. We’re dressing you up tonight, it’d only be fair...”

Where Robyn’s teasing is of a sultry, smoky vein, Fiona has no qualms getting silly with it.

“We don't need formalwear, we just need them to know we're with you! We can all get matching letter jackets – ‘May’s BFF’s,’ big bold letters – It could have a little cartoon May face on it! Like a mascot!” she laughs, unable to help herself once the silly image pops into her mind’s eye. Alas, the real May’s face is contorting into a buzz-killing scowl, so she cuts it there, still smiling as she mumbles a “Sorry.”

Once the racks have been thoroughly pillaged for each member’s personal picks, the four huntresses-in-training assemble by one of the changing rooms in the back of the store.

Robyn hums, foisting her gathered items onto Fiona’s teetering pile, and drapes an arm around her shoulders.

“Well, we can’t ALL fit in there. I mean, we could with a little bit of elbow grease, cooking grease, and some good old fashioned team spirit, but I think this is your ball, Fi. Care to do the honors?”

To be fair, they’re already flagrantly disregarding (or ‘coincidentally missing’) the posted signage designating one occupant at a time. Since... that rule can’t be so rock-solid! Moms would probably, like, take their toddlers into one when they’re picking out clothes for them, and May’s brand new at girl-stuff, which makes her BASICALLY a toddler in spirit, right? So… so, it’s all good!

While years of suspicious looks and prejudice have given Fiona incentive not to use her semblance to carry their haul, once she’s dropped the bundle on the shelf inside the changing room, she quickly utilizes her semblance to absorb her own big, puffy coat into her palm. An artist needs room to work, no matter how fun she may be to squish!

“Okay, um, here, I’ll hold onto your scroll – Girl clothes tip? We get screwed on pockets – and I guess we can start with…” Fiona zwoops May’s scroll into her palm as it’s passed over, and begins to separate the chaotic pile of clothing into their designated archetypes.

Meanwhile, with all due caution not to whack Fiona in the face and a good deal of hesitation from her unease over her figure, May pulls off her hoodie and pinches the hem of her shirt beneath to do the same. She gets it most of the way over her head when she hears a stifled shriek from the changing room’s other occupant.

“What!? What’s wrong?”

“S-sorry! I forgot you wouldn’t be wearing a bra!”

May finishes tugging her shirt over her head and tosses it aside to find the sheep faunus spun to face the wall in embarrassment.

“What? Why would I be wearing– I don’t OWN any bras, Fiona! ...Or have anything for them to hold!”

Fiona can feel heat creeping up her face, and she stammers, “It’s! It’s still really intimate!”

“You’ve seen me topless, like, a thousand times!”

“That was when they were PECS!” Fiona whines. “They’re BOOBS now!” How can May not GET it!? They’re totally different territories! In her completely, 100% valid distress, she weakly, blindly bats a hand behind herself. A blow which lands, coincidentally, upon May’s bare chest. Fi squeaks again.

Knock-knock.

“What’s all this commotion I hear about boobs?” Robyn asks from outside the stall. “You’ve piqued my interest, shortstack.”

Smugly, Joanna’s voice joins her, sounding like the two’re leaning right against the doorframe together. “And about May being topless? Because if she doesn't have any tops–“ Whap. “Ow! What?”

Okay, Fiona can acknowledge that one was pretty good, since she can see May’s face glowing like a Solstice-time shop window display out of the corner of her eye, and it’s super-cute, but…! They’re trying to put her at ease, here, not make her uncomfortable! “Alright, you two! You can mess with her once we’re back at school! We’re on a mission right now!”

“Messing with Marigold’s an all-day activity, sweetheart,” says Robyn, deaf to the sustained groaning of the girl in question. “But a fair point.”

And there is a lot of groaning and grumbling, as Fiona helps hustle May through the rigmarole of trying out the various items, and the inevitable dampening of her mood with every shirt that sits too tight in the shoulders, every pair of footwear that just won’t work.

Fiona’s not dense, so she gets why it must be a major hit to May’s morale, and gives her an understanding smile as they keep working through the stack. “It’s just like that sometimes,” Fiona comments, sliding a turtleneck back onto its hanger, “womens’ sizing is all stupid kinds of inconsistent already, and used stuff? You never know how bad they got stretched or shrunk!”

This seems to make the remaining failures carry less of a sting, and the small victories all the more delightful. Once all their wheat’s sorted from the chaff, what remains is... er, color-coordinating the wheat? Wait, no, that’s… that’s dumb. Whatever, making an outfit, that’s what’s important!

An eternity later, Fiona emerges from the confines of the stall to find Robyn and Joanna draped over one another on an antique wooden bench, probably intended for actual sale, rather than the careless lounging of impatient huntresses. Their heads jerk up straight as the rustling catches their attention, and Joanna flicks open her scroll, camera mode at the ready.

“Ta-da!” cheers Fiona, hopping aside and gesturing broadly with both arms at the sliding door. When the person she’s trying to triumphantly ‘ta-da’ about doesn’t appear, she balances tenuously on one leg to bump the stall with her foot and pointedly coughs.

Without (much) further ado, the door slides open once more, and out steps May in what is, by the rest of the team’s assessment, the absolute shyest manner they’ve ever seen in their lives. Adorable, Fiona thinks.

Her hair is the smallest change, for lack of wanting to screw around with wigs or extensions, but a little work goes a long way. Compared to the regulation rich boy standard she’d started with first year, she's steadily pushed the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ length. It's been a losing battle for the barber; she's held off longer and longer each time, the shaggy blue locks falling an inch beneath her chin now that Fiona’s given them a good brushing-out. The hairband placed on top is purely decorative, but helps accent the feminine flair.

With limited space, materials, and patience, the makeup job Fiona’d run was just a quickie; bit of concealer here, matte foundation there, just enough eyeliner on top to make them pop. Even pulled into a nervous grimace, her features are softer, less strained, like adding a layer of cosmetic gunk somehow peeled away a mask instead. Fi’ll have to give her the full demo some other night.

For her very first outing, May’s been re-outfitted with a cute, mellow, inextricably girly brown faux-shearling style coat with warm wooly hemming. Peeking out just beneath, she’s sporting a plaid skirt of even darker mocha, barely making it halfway to her knees before it’s overtaken by deep navy fleece leggings, and a pair of replica sheepskin mini-boots neatly matching her top half.

Years ago, when May was still adjusting to sharing space with faunus not busy toiling on a rich man’s service staff, she’d’ve balked at picking out something even tangentially sheep-product-adjacent while Fiona was present. Now, Fiona’s happy to say, she’s successfully drilled it into her doofy skull not to make a big deal of it. And besides, it means she gets to wear such cute, fuzzy stuff! Just look at her! It’s a treat!

“It... doesn’t look like shit, does it?” asks May, already convinced beyond all doubt that it does. “How bad is it? Be brutally honest.” She tries to read their faces, and in the process spots the scroll trained on her. May flips her tallest teammate the bird, but Jo snaps a pic anyway, turning the screen to show it off to their would-be model.

“You look fine, you nerd,” calls Joanna, “do a spin already!”

May huffs. “It doesn’t – The coat’s too long, it won’t LET the thing spin!” Try as she might, her hip-swishing only succeeds at fluttering the bottom of her skirt while the rest remains pinned underneath.

“Hm… It’s still missing something.” Robyn clicks her tongue a time or two, then inspiration strikes. She snaps her fingers and dips out to a nearby aisle laden with outdated accessories, leaving her teammates to their confusion.

She reappears a few moments later with the fruit of her search – a simple, patternless cotton scarf in a burnt-ochre orange. "You're always sulking about the wind down here, so let’s keep you nice and warm."

Joanna doesn’t have any actual issue with the thing, but opts to raise one anyway, because heckling Robyn is one of her sacred romantic responsibilities. "That color, really? You’re not exactly a fashion maven, Boss."

"It's on SALE."  Robyn swoops right into May’s personal space as the latter woman finishes another unsuccessful skirt-twirl, drapes it around her neck, and begins to fit it. May, stricken still with a flustered panic from the softness – of the scarf, of Robyn’s passing touch – just swallows thickly and lets it happen without incident. “Well, it’s on sale, my card’s six stamps away from a half-off coupon, and it looks cute on her, so you can kindly stuff it.”

Stepping back from the May-Mannequin, she retreats to the bench and lifts her fingers to form a frame.

“...Yep. We did a good job, girls: that there’s one pretty Bluebird.”

Once again, the Bluebird burns with a brilliant pink blush, muttering dismissals under her breath. Fiona might just have’ta ask to be forwarded some of those shots Joanna’s been snapping, especially if she manages to capture and preserve this precious moment in particular.

Because rather than tell them all to, in no uncertain terms, ‘fuck off forever and then some,’ or even to just turn invisible to hide her emotional display, May... just stands there, flexing and fidgeting and wringing her hands, as a bashful smile blooms. The thick ice starting to crack during a long thaw.

In the categorization scheme of Marigold Smiles, it’s a super-ultra-rare. Fiona’s kept track: there’s the performative, cocky combat smile, the wry smirk after a successful roasting, the fake smile tied to denying her hurts, a soul-deep exhaustion with life… But a real one, 100% certified, mint-condition happy smile? Those, like, NEVER happen!

Gods, Fiona’s heart is just super-full right now; a comfy, familiar, first-sip-of-hot-cider kind of warmth. Whatever else happens tonight, this is already worth it.

Chapter Text

A few blocks down the road, Joanna’s still making a fuss over not getting to stuff May in some high heels, as was initially pitched as a perk of their getaway. It’s ‘false advertising,’ apparently.

And maybe Fiona’s kinda sad they couldn’t even find any heeled boots that would’ve split the difference, because watching their resident fleet-footed Specialist-in-training go all baby deer on them, wibble-wobbling over patches of black ice, would be super fun.

Though, it’s not like she’s any less heartwarming to watch as-is: gliding with the grace and decorum expected of an Atlesian heiress, yet also affecting just enough of that casual Mantler slouch and shuffle to keep her from looking pompous. Unique.

Plus, Fiona had to respect what May’d laid down – that for the time being, she didn’t want to wear anything that made her come off as any taller than she already is. The visible discomfort there just squeezed at Fiona’s gut, reminded her that while this is just another relaxing return to Mantle for the rest of them, for May, it’s an active battle against her own self-loathing. And how can Fiona NOT respect that, or not be outright proud of how hard she’s fighting for this chance to feel like herself?

So, no heels, no biggie! This time, at least. And a sidelong glare at Joanna gets the relaxed shrug and hand-wave that signals she’s just razzing for the fun of it, to kill time on their way to the next stop.

Food.

She’d been A-okay during their thrift shop adventure, but her stomach’s starting to develop an attitude. Even if May was the only one made to freeze out in the mountains for Midterms week, they haven’t been a cakewalk for the rest of the group, either! An easy peasy, probably greasy pick-me-up is just what they need for dinner!

Fiona takes another long look at May and smiles to herself, recalling their hijinks the very first time they’d taken her down here. And it WAS a liiiiiittle mean, but after grabbing a bundle of gyros from one of the local food trucks, they’d persuaded her into paying… Only for the heiress to be left at a loss when the vendor was NOT connected to the cushy digital banking systems of the upper city, getting his hackles up and slapping the Cash Only sign that, to her, might as well’ve been carved in ancient runes.

Oh, they bailed her out then and there, and threw in a few extra lien for the vendor’s trouble, but it was a valuable learning experience! Besides, May’s better acclimated nowadays, enough so not to loudly balk at the team’s choice of dining establishment as they descend the entrance stairway. Fiona might be projecting, but… she could swear May even looks a little excited?

The Pig Site was once a dig site, and somewhere in between, an unfinished underground train station, lacking a single train to stop there. A handful of years ago, some ingenious civic engineer thought that Mantle not only deserved a subway system, but that its construction would be an easy feat – all the existing mine tunneling will cut down build time, he claimed, and SDC-employed miners might even be able to take a train straight to their jobsites, if that’d squeeze some contributions out from Old Man Schnee himself to sweeten the pot!

...All this, completely ignoring the historical instability of the overmined ground. And the mess that is Mantle’s municipal sewage system. And like, the dust? The highly-reactive veins of raw, undiluted elemental dust?

In short, an unparalleled disaster, and another waste of city funds that can never be recouped. The only living reminder of the hilariously poor business decision is the underground space that’s found new life as a neon-lit food court of sorts: smalltime taco joints and noodle bars spawning out of the lifeless husks of ticket windows and security stations, just as Mother Nature intended.

It also spares the girls the inevitable argument over what type of grub they want to grab, likely one of the biggest perks of the place. After a tactical split to pursue the demands of their respective stomachs, the team reconvenes at one of the many dirt-cheap acrylic tables scattered across the center of the station.

Fiona’s been craving something hot to counteract the cold, so a spicy ramen bowl should do the trick. It’s been a while since she’s had ramen that wasn’t conjoined at the hip with the word ‘instant,’ and plus, little risk of her girlfriends reaching over and pinching a bite; you can’t sneakily steal a noodle! Or could you? With a semblance like hers, maybe if she slipped a finger down the edge of a bowl…? Something to ponder while she slurps.

Joanna’s the second to return, bearing a massive enchilada so fully stuffed with unknown contents that Fiona begins to feel a sudden kinship. Joanna regards her for a second and chuckles, “Wow, that bad, huh?”

“Wha-huh? Why?”

“You were doing your lil’ nose-wrinkle,” Jo emphasizes with an affectionate boop to said feature. “So either your noodles suck, or you were scheming.”

“No, no, it’s fine! No suck, no schemes!” Eager to dodge discussing her highly-confidential food-pilfering plots, Fiona forks the conversation onto another branch. “Soooo… How’re you feeling about tonight? I know we’re not really smooching as much as we would if it were a date-date...”

“We still could.” Joanna waggles her eyebrows, scooping up another bite of her dinner. “Right now, even. Make some Mistrali-Vacuan flavor fusion?”

Fiona snorts, and she can feel some spice in her nostrils. “Eeew, don’t be gross!”

“But, it’s been alright. Tonight, I mean.” Joanna takes a bite to fill time, formulating her thoughts. “Doesn’t feel too different, though. Thought it’d be some big…” She keeps her fork level and spreads the fingers of her free hand wide, making a ‘Pshooo’ sound. “Instead it’s just… normal. Sure, she’s cute and all–“

“Cute as a boot,” Robyn butts in, returning from her own scavenging mission. “And those boots we stuffed her in are already pretty damn cute, so, bonus.” She pulls out a chair with that requisite shrill scrape of its legs on the tile, and drops in with her tray. She’s gone in for a cheeseburger and enough fries for everyone to steal, forever a provider for the people.

“As I was SAYING…” Joanna charges her rudeness toll – four fries, to be exact – and returns to her point. “She’s obviously happier like this, but it’s not like it’s really changed that much else about her. Still the same Marigold, just…” She blows a puff of air, and falls back on the word of the day. “Just cute.”

“Cute,” agrees Robyn.

“Cute,” Fiona wisely concurs, eyes closed and head bowed.

Picking at their meals, but loathe to truly gorge themselves ‘til all parties are present, the three of them watch as May procures her haul from the pizza place. Shifting her weight nervously as she waits in line, it’s plain to see her visibly relax once she’s placed her order, the cashier not giving a damn about her state of dress or scrutinizing her untrained voice in its newly-heightened register.

May engages in a careful balancing act her whole way back, her plate piled with enough individual slices that it begs the question why she didn’t just order a whole pizza to start with.

Can’t be too surprised, though; Pumice dragged the SpecOps bunch out before lunch the day prior, so Fiona figures May hasn’t eaten anything but ration bars in the last 36 hours. Please let this girl get something greasy in her system.

And it’s good that May’s long since let herself explore whatever food fits her fancy, rather than being ashamed if they caught her indulging in peasant food rather than foie gras, but… But no, there’s still something here that she can, must, and will be shamed for.

“Oh, come on! Not again!”

May’s motion grinds to a halt, her knife still between the fork’s tines, halfway through cutting up her first slice. “Is there a problem?” she asks, with a slathering of sarcasm. She knows the reason for the uproar, this heated debate’s long since turned into a cold war.

Robyn, squeezing into the role of the diplomat, states evenly, “May, we’re begging you. You stick out like a sore thumb. You’re exuding Maximum Atlas into the air.”

“You can just use your hands, really!” Fiona adds.

Slowly, May starts to move her knife, cutting her pizza, but not the tension. “And I’d rather keep those hands clean! Did you forget I only just got these clothes? I’m not going to ruin them just because I risked letting my greasy hands fumble a slice.”

It’s time for the team leader to lay down the law. Robyn shakes her head solemnly. “You’ve left me no choice but the reckless abuse of my authority: Banned, May Marigold. You are BANNED from using a knife and fork for finger food.”

“Oh? Is that how it’s gonna be? In THAT case…” May’s eyes begin to slyly slide away from her own meal, and off towards Fiona’s discarded carry-out bag.

Joanna accurately traces May’s line of sight with a deep dread in her voice. “Girl, don’t do it.”

Before Fiona can form a barrier with her arm, May’s swiped up a spare pair of chopsticks from the bag and popped them out of their paper-wrapped confines. As her team watches on, faces a triptych of shock, bewilderment, and horror, May lifts the pizza slice to her lips, pinned between her chopsticks.

Defeatedly, Joanna slumps back in her chair, her enchilada all-but-forgotten. “We’ve created a monster.”

“At least, um. At least I don’t… think they do it that way up in Atlas?” says Fiona, adding an optimistic spin to this travesty. “So that’s something!”

May savors the chaos, and takes another bite.

With food to fill their bellies, their merry band hits the bricks again. For all the big plans they’d batted around at lunch yesterday, falling back on spontaneity seems the safest bet – the entire point was to just have a nice, normal night out, and let May unwind as May! Hit up the same spots they always do. It’s not like they’re trying to charm her or anything, they’re not on a date!

Heh... Yeah.

Anyway! Fiona’s happy they’re having fun just feeling things out.

It’s a bit sad that The Magic Bean’s still shuttered – best damn fair-trade coffee house on the east side, if you ask Joanna, and Fi’s a fan of their oatmeal cookies – but the Spriggins family’s had a hard time putting things back together after an Ice Manticore puked a fireball through the front window. Robyn loves cracking wise about it really being slow roast coffee now, but she’s miffed too; means that the girls are stuck swinging through an overrated Atlas-owned franchise to get their portable caffeine fix.

It’s a little too late in the evening to slip into one of those few brave arcades still kicking in the modern age of scroll-games, and they’ve walked a little too far from the more family-friendly side of the sector anyway, the icy sidewalks reflecting the garish neon glow of signs for a dozen different huntsman bars and nightclubs. Instead, they find their entertainment in the fashion most befitting their chosen career – piling into the first weapons shop they find to browse the latest, most unaffordable in Grimm-slaying tech.

Maybe they’ll run into a spark of inspiration, and finally tempt May into making her own weapon – it’s sad to watch, her being one of the only third-years still defaulting to stock armaments for lack of finding the right one. Unable to partake in that rite of passage, forge that extension, that expression of her soul, like every huntress should get to! There’d be no point switching up her weaponry now with the Vytal Festival waiting in the wings, but it would be nice to see her find her niche, express herself, something to mesh well with theirs!

But mentioning Vytal as a whole means drifting into debate over the team’s preparedness as they file out of the store, which has – somehow, while Fiona was spacing out to sip her caramel latte – become a nonsensical argument about… bows? She thinks it’s bows.

“Listen to me, we know they’re adding another water terrain to the lineup this year, so–!“ May observes, overtaken as Robyn fires right back.

“Just because they said water doesn’t mean it’ll be a pool, it could always be a beach.”

“I’m just saying, maybe it would be nice for you to pack something that won’t be rendered useless if you’re knocked in? You can't shoot arrows underwater – Water fucks with projectiles!”

“Not all of ‘em!” Joanna butts in. “What about harpoons?”

May sighs, like she’s trying to explain physics to a toddler. “Harpoons aren't arrows, they're spears.”

Robyn chuckles, giving Jo’s hand an appreciative squeeze. “Ah, but you can still shoot them like arrows – with a speargun.”

“If it's a GUN, then it isn't a bow OR arrow anymore!”

“But Robyn’s working on a crossbow, me 'n Jo've got crossbows on our weapons,” Fiona ponders aloud to stir the pot, “and crossbows’re just arrow guns! ...For not-water!”

“Those fire BOLTS!” May fumes.

Brothers, they’re getting nowhere in a hurry, and it’s the best.

May throws her hands up – asymmetrically; one’s still holding a hot beverage – and stalks ahead while muttering her frustration, and Joanna hustles behind her to playfully hassle her some more, the pair disappearing around the corner into an alley threading the district’s old brick buildings. Just a few steps behind, Fiona looks back at Robyn to give a knowing giggle and moves to catch up to their team’s other half.

The evening takes a turn before they can.

“Oh. My. GODS.”

A lot of things happen at once. A lot of noises, both sharp and subtle, all picked up by Fiona’s heightened faunus hearing:

A shrill hyena-cackle not belonging to any of her teammates.

A brief groan from Robyn, immediately choked out by a gasp of realization.

The sound of plastic coffee cups hitting the pavement and spilling their contents from around the alley corner – and bursts of footsteps pounding through the slush.

From where the rest of Team VLIT loiters in front of the club across the street, Helga Veilchen sashays up into Robyn’s personal bubble with an overly-familiar grin, like they’re the bestest of buds, like there’s a joke afoot, and she wants in on it.

Veilchen’s run Robyn’s nerves through a rusty cheese grater since the first day of the Leadership classes they share as team captains. Initially, she’d just worried that laugh meant this chick was going to be a hassle about her and her girlfriends having fun – Because the lurid rumors get around about the ladykiller Robyn Hill and her escapades, no matter how healthy and committed her girlfriends’ relationship.

But then she’d followed Helga’s eyes… Not on her, on the alley, just over her shoulder, flashing with a disquieting hunger. The alley behind which May’d only just vanished. May, whose face she knows from years of SpecOps Prep–

Then she gets it.

“Okay, spill –  Like, what kind of bet did he lose for you to get him all done up in drag? Tell me you’re getting pictures, holy shit. Schnee’s gonna freak.”

“Who... do you mean?” bluffs Robyn, her racing mind breaking Solitas land speed records to search for  a solution.

Beside her, Fiona’s nerves are fraying apart – No wonder May took off running; her panic is understandable, and if she’s had a panic attack, she’s probably popped her semblance, and if she popped her semblance, finding her’s probably a no-go, they’ll have to wait and call her–

...On her scroll.

Still in her pocket, Fiona’s hand glows, and out it pops into her palm, that same device handed to her back in the thrift shop changing room for safe keeping.

No scroll, no way to call May, no way to find her wherever she might run in these unfamiliar streets. Her aura level’s still low from Midterm testing, there’s no way it’ll last the night if she can’t find a place near the heating grid to hole up! She could freeze! And, and she doesn’t know what gangs lurk which streets, which districts have military curfews, and she’s unarmed, and if someone catches her in those clothes, and if she’s aura-broken and scared, too tired to run or fight–

Shit. Shitshitshit.

“You know who!” At this point, Veilchen drops May’s deadname like it’s nothing special, but it still collides with Fiona like a sack of bricks, especially in this context. “Wait, it WAS a bet, right? It’s not just some pervy thing he’s got going on, is it? Oh, but you know what they say about the quiet ones!”

The strain in Robyn’s face calcifies into a sudden determination, a plan formed on the fly. Without a word, she forcibly grabs for Helga’s hand, linking their palms and sparking up her semblance.

“What the hell, Hill?!”

“That’s not–“ Robyn’s emphasis on the name is ragged, now that she’s forced to employ it, like it’s shredding her vocal cords. Sorry, May, but… desperate times, desperate measures.

“Uh, have you hit the juice too hard already? Don’t lie, I saw him, you three’ve got him all dolled up!”

Only after a few more seconds of matching Robyn’s hard stare does Helga look down at their hands. At the green glow between them, attesting only the truth has been spoken.

“How the–? Wait, if… but if that wasn’t him, then who even...?” Helga mumbles, wide eyed, stunned by the sight and its inexorable implications.

Robyn’s semblance has long since gone down in Academy infamy, the legends seeping into every social circle. More than just a cheap trick for party games, the students and faculty alike have seen it function without fail for years, the simple noncombat semblance turning her into a boogeyman for anyone with anything to hide. It’s become a simple fact of their collective reality – that no matter how suspicious the claim, no matter how absurd, if her semblance says that wasn’t ‘him,’ then it wasn’t. Just as true as the sky is gray and ice is cold, and that’s all there is to it.

“Let’s just say she’s a Marigold you might not’ve heard of,” Robyn rattles off, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial tone. "She's not exactly recognized by the rest of the family, if you catch my drift? Doesn’t make a lot of public appearances."

Another technical truth, semblance a steady green, no room for doubt. How’s it Robyn’s fault if Veilchen vaults to conclusions? If the Atlesian elites have a certain penchant for illicit extramarital entanglements?

“...Whoa! Oh, shit, you mean like a–“ Helga disengages from Robyn’s grip to perform a frantic series of nonsensical hand gestures, a few fingers poking into a thumb-and-forefinger circle, and… some abstract thing with her fists that’s supposed to be a baby popping out? “How did nobody ever know!? ...UNLESS! Ohmigods, unless she dressed up like–“ Again with that name, damn it. “So they’d think she was him, like in that one movie, and…!”

Robyn just leans back and lets Veilchen hypothesize herself into a frenzy, the lust for a hot scandal weaving an intricate, decades-long Marigold family conspiracy from whole cloth. Her only real contributions are a few “Could be’s” and an “I know, right?” or two, until she’s sure her ploy has run its course.

“But, if you’ll excuse us,” she interrupts, “me and the girls are gonna get right back to it. I’m sure you’ve got… something… going on, yourself.”

“Oh, totally! Like, I gotta dip too, we smashed our tests so VLIT’s got this whole bar crawl going on – I fucking love Faunus bars, you know? They’re so gritty! ...No offense, Fi-Fi!”

Fiona swallows churning sewage in order to cough out a "Yeah, no sweat," already sidling away to hook into the alleyway and find her girlfriends– Girlfriend! Her girlfriend, and also May. Focus!

As swiftly as she can manage while keeping subtle, Fiona hits the corner of the building and peers around.

Blowing smoke up Veilchen’s ass with a few more falsely-friendly goodbyes, Robyn disengages from the pain-in-the-ass diva and follows not far behind Fiona.

“May…? Jo-Jo?” Robyn calls out, a token effort given to sounding like friends who’ve merely misplaced one another during a pleasant evening, rather than letting frantic concern bleed through. Fiona’s ovine ears furl in at the volume spike, but it’s an emergency, no blame there.

The alley into which they’d seen their respective partners turn is vacant, just a bunch of sodden cardboard boxes and crushed beer cans. It hadn’t taken them that long to get rid of Helga, had it? At least the fact they’re both gone means Joanna’s got a head start.

Robyn has to duck her head to squeeze through the ripped gap in a line of chicken-wire fencing, but Fiona skates through just fine, a rare perk of her diminutive size. Score one for the team small-fry! ...For once!

She sucks in a lungful of that bitter, homey Mantle air as they hit the street on the other side. There’s a straight stretch of reasonably-crowded commercial district shooting off in either direction, through which she can’t really spy Joanna’s spiky green frock. Across the way and wedged between some shops to the left is another cramped alley.

If I were May, where would I run?

The puzzle in predicting her is the state of her semblance; there’s no way she’d want to be seen by anyone if she’s fleeing mid-panic, which wouldn’t be a problem if she could stay invisible the whole time… But she’s running on fumes, meaning she’ll have to feather its usage, assuming she’s even capable of thought that rational until her brain stops screaming at her.

Either way, she wouldn’t risk popping back into the picture out where the public can see her and draw even more attention, make her feel even worse, so… Next alley over it is?

Fiona waves Robyn along behind her and braces for disappointment, but she can safely let go of that long-held breath once she gets a look ‘round the next corner. All she finds is Joanna, partly obscured behind a dumpster in the far distance, looking to all the world like a basket case for loitering in a grime-caked backstreet, pantomiming a tight hug on an imaginary figure and repeatedly stroking the air.

Okay. Okay, Jo caught her in time. Thank the gods.

“Jo!” Fiona shouts, skidding on an icy patch and catching herself on the lip of the dumpster. “Is she… You’ve got her?”

Of course she’s got her, it’s a pretty stupid question, but rational thought is at a premium right now.

“Yeah, yeah. Right here.” Joanna’s voice is unusually soft around the edges, a tone she only tends to take in private moments with her partners. “Ssh. Hey. Robs ‘n Fi are back. Think they took care of it,” she whispers to the invisible bundle in her arms. She turns her eyes to Robyn and asks, “...You did take care of it, right?”

Sounding so out of breath – more from the incident than the hustle over here – Robyn nods and confirms, “It’s handled. Nothing to worry about.” She wipes her hand on her pants, like it can somehow clean it of the metaphysical filth from dealing with Veilchen.

There’s some sort of muffled, May-like sound from the general vicinity of Joanna’s chest, but with her semblance still invoked, the noise is dampened. When the invisible clump realizes she can’t be heard, she reluctantly drops the shroud, warbling back into existence.

Her eyes are still strained with the vestiges of panic, terrified tears having smeared even the small amount of mascara Fiona’d applied, running right down her cheeks. She’s visibly trembling like a scroll set to silent, like she’s got espresso in her bone marrow, like she’s going to vibrate right through Joanna’s arms. “H-how?! She’s– She saw! She saw me, she knows, she fucking knows, t-they’re all gonna know, it’s over, I’m–! I can’t, not like this…!”

Fiona would kindly like the vice squeezing her heart to cut it out. She gives Robyn a look, and… yep, she’s in the same place. As the most experienced Robyn-dater on the team, she knows when her girlfriend’s barely keeping her cool, when the confident team captain is about to collapse under her worries.

But... It’s Robyn Hill. And in all the time she’s known her, Robyn Hill hasn’t given up quite that easily.

Even though it’s a poor fit for the moment, Robyn slaps on that default smirk of hers, lifts her right hand and wiggles her fingers, flaring her semblance for just a second. “Congratulations, hon. You’re now officially your own secret bastard step-sister!”

May’s breakdown is eased a bit, in part from her absolute incredulity at what she’s just heard. She sniffles weak and snotty, looks up to Joanna – who shrugs – and then straight back to Robyn. “...The f-fuck are you talking about?”

“She only told her the truth,” Fiona says softly, stepping closer to rub May’s shoulder, now that she can actually see where to rub. “It wasn’t… him, it was someone else. It was you.”

“And if she decided to get a little colorful with her personal interpretation of the irrefutable evidence…” Robyn shrugs with her hands spread. “What can you do? ...But, as long as you roll with whatever her godsforsaken mind’s come up with if she ever asks about your family’s dirty little secret, it’s looking like a clean getaway. Even sets us up a solid alibi for the future! If, er. If we ever…”

She’s not lying or anything, they all know that, but it still reeks of bullshit on account of her laughably forced smile. It’s all she can do to hold it a few seconds more, ‘til all the paper-mache and glitter-glue crumbles apart, and Robyn’s face plummets.

“Damn it. May… I’m sorry. This is all my fau–”

“It’s fine,” May lies as effortlessly as she breathes. “S’fine...”

Joanna snorts. “You don’t look very fine, kid.”

“K-kid? You are a whole – snf – you're a whole two and a half years older than me, don’t even start! It’s fine, if she doesn’t tell people it’s me, it’s fine… F-forget it, I knew it could happen, I came anyway...”

And, load of bullshit number two. Fiona easily spots the vicious cycles spinning up on either side; May downplaying a serious spike of stress over a legitimate threat, and Robyn flagellating herself with guilt over a situation that – for the time being, at least – has been defused without a casualty.

If they’re going to do this, it’s best they do it in the dorms, and not three feet from a smelly dumpster. She’s pretty sure something just moved in there.

“You’re still crying,” Fiona tries to counter as delicately as she can. “And shaking, and – May, did you even think where you would’ve gone? Did you forget you weren’t carrying this?”

She presents May’s scroll to prove her point, and judging by the jolt of recognition, the answer’s ‘yes.’ Joanna disengages half of her crushing hug so May can get an arm free and swipe it, but still remains firmly, if unnecessarily, held tight.

“...Maybe. Doesn’t matter.”

Okay, you really don’t want to snap at the girl who just had her life flash before her eyes, but this is starting to poke some of Fiona’s nerves. “It DOES matter! We care about you, a lot! So duh, we don’t want you to be hurt, or scared, but we don’t want you to haf’ta pretend you’re alright just to spare our feelings, either!”

Must’ve channeled a bit of Robyn’s speechcraft in that one; the selfsame woman gives her an affirming shoulder squeeze. “Couldn’t’ve said it better myself, Lambchop.”

“So, we done for the night?” asks Joanna. “It’s feeling like we’re done for the night.”

May screws herself out and away from the hold. “N-no, you’d – You can’t throw away the rest of your night just because I’m…”

“We didn’t even have any other plans!” Fiona argues, “We were just gonna wander! Like, big whoop, we miss out on some window shopping; you got scared half to death! You almost got lost where we couldn’t find you!”

Having temporarily recouped some of her self-confidence, or at least the wherewithal to pretend she has, Robyn takes on that air of calm rationality. “Date Night’s always been, first and foremost, about the three of us doing whatever we feel like. And what the three of us feel like right now is getting you back home safe. Sometimes they’re just a bust, they can’t all be winners.”

May stops short of smudging away at the running mascara on her cheeks with the sleeve of her spiffy new coat. She backs up a few steps until she’s leaned against the wall, arms folded, and stares at her boots.

It really seemed like she was gonna say something, but… maybe not? Fiona lets the silence roll a little longer, then asks her girlfriends, “Soooo… D’we loop straight back to the store, borrow the changing rooms again? I think they’re still open for another hour.”

Joanna is reluctant to take her eyes off May, like the girl’s still a flight risk, prone to panic and run if she so much as turns away for more than a second or two. “If she had s’more aura in her, I’d just say to go ghost on us and I’d carry ‘er the whole way back. Would save her having to change. But...”

“But I’m an idiot with low aura, I get it,” May grumbles. She paces across to a pile of old tires and plants her butt down. To the group’s collective surprise, she goes to unbutton her coat, beginning to strip down right there in the alleyway, adding shivers of cold to the shivers of fear she just can’t shake. “Fuck it, I’ve got enough to do it here, so toss me my shit.”

And poof, away she fizzles, no further proof of her presence until a cute, ploofy shearling coat pops right out of thin air, sleeves flapping wildly, haphazardly tossed out of the invisibility field.

Dutifully, Fiona decompresses May’s old, grubby hoodie from her semblance and tosses it over in turn, slowly exchanging the bits and pieces. The others mind their business kicking empty soda cans and check-check-rechecking the shuttle schedule, intently NOT thinking about the awkward fact that there’s a sad, shivering, mostly-naked May a scant few feet away. At least they’re only a stone’s throw from a heating grid node, and it won’t take long.

A few minutes later, the deed is done. With a shimmer of air and aura, May materializes back on top of the tire stack, sliding off the hairband and tossing it to her teammate. Her posture’s already sunk like a stone, shoulders bunched, her head heavy, staring vacantly at the blank brick wall across the way.

The alley is silent but for the background rumblings of the city, and the remaining three are trading looks, passing the hot potato over who gets to butt in when May finally, weakly speaks.

“Was still worth it… still wanted this. Even if it…” She shrugs tiredly, succumbing to an encore of sniffling. "It was nice while it lasted though, huh?"

In that moment, to her audience of three, May’s wistful, watery smile becomes something tragically beautiful, her distant golden eyes a dying sunset over the rippling waves of her tears. Bittersweet.

And in that same moment, unbeknownst to one another, three huntresses share the same implacable, enamored pangs. The same snapping of heartstrings.

The thought that it was nice while it lasted.

The thought that they’d rather it last forever.

Before classes can begin the following Monday, some rude-ass thumps their literal ass down on the other end of May’s desk, disturbing the effort to review her notes until the professor arrives. She gives herself three guesses as to who’d have the audacity, and all three are ‘Please, don’t be her.’

So, it’s her.

“Heeeeeey there, Marigold!” croons Helga fuck-personal-boundaries-I-guess Veilchen, again, talking at her more than to her. She’d wonder why the posh little queen bee’s decided to grace her with annoyance when they hardly ever interact, but the answer’s apparent even before the other girl leans in to excitedly whisper, “Bee-tee-dubs, I bumped into your team partying this weekend!”

May flips a page in her notebook, placid despite her internal panic. “...That so?”

“Mmmmyeah, and y’know, they were hanging out with a little someone you might be familiar with? I didn’t know those girls were friends with the rest of your family!”

“Who, Henry?” she asks, for appearance’s sake. Like fuck would her team tolerate Henry, the guy’s the full-course version of all the shit for which May’s initial, fake fop persona was an appetizer.

"Nah, I think I heard ‘em call her May or something? Is that her name? The secret girl?” Veilchen pats her on the shoulder, and she immediately feels dire need to disinfect. “Careful,” the other girl teases, “they might be trying to replace you with her!"

May exhales slowly, and returns to her notes.

"Sometimes I wish they would."

Chapter Text

“Alright, fuck this.”

Somewhere between the nineteenth and twentieth rep of her bench press session, Joanna’s patience finally runs out.

The team’s just going to have to talk about it. The invisible elephant in the room.

They haven’t been going out on the weekends, anymore. Not for the last month or so. Haven’t gone anywhere fun, haven’t been down home, and the casualties are starting to mount; they even missed the Solitas Miner’s Union community cookoff, and Fiona’s uncle entered his family favorite three-alarm chili into the running! He’d shipped some leftovers up after the fact, but it’s just not the same.

Even so, none of them, none of them want to go anywhere off-campus without May.

And neither do they want to ask her to do so, running the risk of pressuring her. Not since five weeks ago, not since that bullet they dodged close enough to graze the skin, where May almost got– Where… it almost got ugly, fast.

Joanna can’t really fault May for not being a ball of sunshine afterwards; the girl took a rough hit just as she was trying to climb up out of her misery, knocked back to being almost as sad and flighty as before she’d come out. The clash with Veilchen had only kicked off some passive whispers about her family tree, nothing catastrophic, but it was still damage. Damage that isn’t all magically fixed just because Robyn hoodwinked one person.

The guilt over the night’s been eating away at Robyn, she can tell without even having to ask, not that their valiant leader’d even be willing to entertain the conversation. Having the best of intentions, her attempt to take command and help one of her team backfired, could have gotten their increasingly-closer-than-close friend publicly outed, disowned, pulled from the Academy, exiled…

It’s understandable that she’d be gun-shy about outings, about wanting them to take May out again, no matter how much they want to, and how special the last time had been, right up until… that.

Except, what’s pissing Joanna off is: Nobody’s talking about anything. Everybody knows the real reason why their team’s tense and tiptoeing around talk of off-campus hangouts and dates and doing shit, it’s why Robyn keeps tactfully guiding conversations the other way, but keeps heaving that stupid forlorn sigh staring dreamily at the back of Marigold’s head whenever they’re in class. Too obvious.

It’s why Fiona is willing to miss out on family visits to spend more time holed up in the dorm keeping May company, even when they all know how much she likes keeping in touch more personally than over the scroll. She’s not hiding the ‘why’ very well, either.

Considerate sweetheart that she is, there’s no doubt Fiona sees May sulking, and Robyn sulking over May, and wants to speak up, but also doesn’t want to upset anyone by twisting any existing knives. Which makes HER sulk, and shove her own feelings to the side!

A lot of people take a look at Joanna and think, ‘there goes a big ol’ brute.’ That she probably has the emotional competency of a grilled chicken sandwich, and the delicacy of a concrete slab. And they’re shallow shitheads, obviously, but she’s always known that’s the image she projects, hiding her compassionate core under all this shredded muscle.

And if there’s one time she might as well put that brutishness to work, it’s shoulder-charging right through this stupid, time-wasting, feelings-ey WHATEVER over May that her team’s trapped inside. If Robyn’s not up to her gods-given, leader-ly duty to kick things off because she’s all caught up in her head about it, that means it’s down to her.

“Fuck it,” she reiterates quietly, re-racking the barbell she’s been pumping. She sits up on the bench and rests her elbows on her knees.

As her current spotter, Robyn quirks a brow. “Tossing in the towel already? Thought you were just warming up.”

“Not the weights. This!”

Over on the elliptical bike, Fiona tilts her head at them. “The… gym? You’re mad at the gym? I thought it was pretty nice we got a slot all to ourselves…”

“Metaphorically!” Joanna grunts, “This, all of this, with US, with us and HER, and everything!”

She knows she’s technically being vague as hell, but there’s only one other ‘her’ on their collective minds. And there’s been a whole lot of ‘everything’ to discuss. Even if that ‘everything’ all boils down to one big, keystone issue at the core, one that nobody wants to be the first to touch.

It’s a pretty good time for it, too; though May’d finally stopped making constant excuses to duck out of training sessions ever since she’d come out, tonight their fourth has been plucked away by social obligation.

Some idiotic black-tie high society party at the Schnee Manor, as she told them. Something to do with one of the kids other than Winter? Jo’s already forgotten. The esteemed Mister and Missus Marigold were invited, and by extension, their ‘son’ is expected in tow.

Looking nauseously constipated packed into a tailored tuxedo, May and Winter’s luxury aircab escort swept them away off campus about an hour ago, leaving the three leftovers to try – in futility – to pump and punch and burn out their emotions in the gym rather than just DO something about it.

‘Til now.

“What’s there to talk about?” Robyn dodges. “You mean us staying home for the weekend?” Again. Again. “I’m telling you, it’s no big deal in my book, we’re just...”

Fiona’s stationary biking has slowed to a crawl. “We’re just looking out for our good friend’s feelings!”

Good friend, huh.

“...If neither of you beautiful jag-offs are going to be the one to do it, I will.”

Folding her arms over her sports bra, Joanna fills her lungs, tips her chin high, and authoritatively demands:

“On the count of three, show of hands. Who here DOESN’T have a damn crush on May?”

The girls stare sharply at each other.

“One. Two.”

The girls are still staring at each other, wide and wild.

“Two and a half.”

Locked eyes trade partners.

“Three.”

…

They all feel a little bit like total jackasses when nobody moves an inch, not a twitch of muscle.

Guess that’s settled.

“Fffffffuuuuuuhhhh-cking knew it,” Joanna grits, letting herself fall flat on the padded bench with a thump.

Fiona leans inward, arms crossed on the handlebars of the elliptical, and plops her chin on top. “W-well, at… at least it wasn’t just me, I s’pose.”

Of the others, Robyn’s face looks the most scandalized at being called out. “Wait, wait, how’d you even pick that up?”

“Because, ding-dong, I remember the way you two mooned over each other at first, then over ME before you fessed up, and now, it’s the exact same thing with her. All of us.” Joanna drapes a forearm over her eyes. “Even I’m doing it.”

Robyn just continues to gape and sputter. Over in her own little world, she’s probably still dealing with that pesky ego-bruising over having this sprung on her – the fact that she’s legitimately fostering feelings for May so suddenly, the fact the others can TELL she’s fostering them this quickly, the works. May’s coming-out had blindsided her to begin with, and this is on a whole ‘nother level.

And it tracks, doesn’t it? Fiona flexed on her being a cheeky little goblin, resourceful and sweet. Joanna herself caught Robyn’s eye with strength, inside and out, and a reliability that’s depressingly rare in this world. They’d done so slowly but steadily, on a more conventional timetable, the kind you can see coming mile away. But not May, sneaking up so sudden, feelings hitting out of the blue.

True to form for their team’s stealth expert, she slunk right under the radar, disguised as a complete non-threat – a petty pampered rich boy – and ambushed their respective hearts before they knew what hit them.

For want of something to do with her hands, Robyn starts unfitting the weight discs and stacking them back in storage. Joanna points at them in a silent question, but their team leader passes on the offered help.

“Spent all that time looking at Guy-Marigold and thinking, ‘of course I want to keep him safe and stable, he’s my partner, I’m just being a decent partner. Decent team leader.’ And it’s not like I’ve ever doubted I was gay, so it never felt like attraction back then.” Robyn drops another weight in its rack and pauses. “But no! She just had to be a girl the whole time. And here I am, still just as proud of how far she’s come, still just as worried about her wellbeing, ‘cept NOW I want to kiss her stupid, mopey face. The look she gave us that night, before it all went wrong… I want to see her smiling like that all the time. I want to be the reason she’s smiling.”

Oh, please. Joanna gives a laugh that flexes her stomach. “I wouldn’t wish for miracles. She’s gonna be a total crabcake no matter what, so you’d better be ready to settle for scowls; she’s still our same old Marigold.”

She only reconsiders her wording once the words are out there. ‘Our.’ Our Marigold. Our May. Need to be more careful sounding so possessive when this might still be a pipe dream, both the idea of hammering some love into her, and that they’d be the ones allowed the privilege. Damned if it doesn’t sound like a reward worth fighting for, though.

“I guess…” Fiona fidgets. “I was kinda busy worrying about whether it was even okay, so I didn’t guess you guys’d be thinking the same about her? I mean, it was way easier figuring out I wasn’t alone when Robyn started giving you those sexy eyebeams.”

“She beat me at wrestling! All that muscle pressing down on me? C’mon, it was hot!” Robyn protests in her own defense.

“How can you say these things and still be such a top!?”

Joanna lets her arm fall off her face, knuckles rapping on the padded floors. “Stop dodging the subject, you two – We’re supposed to be talking about May.”

“Well of course SHE wouldn’t be,” Robyn chuckles. “Couldn’t top her way out of a wet paper bag.”

“Not what I meant!”

Robyn saunters over to the gym’s edge as she smarmily singsongs, “But you’ve thouuuught about it!”

Fuck off, like they all haven’t wondered at least once how May’d prefer to play in the bedroom. Doesn’t help that with their date nights indefinitely postponed, they haven’t had a decent shot at canoodling in a hot minute. So EXCUSE HER if she’s a little pent-up!

“Don’t be perv,” she says instead. And is not dodging the accusation in any way. Shut up.

Crouching by their pile of discarded duffels, Robyn pulls out her water bottle and takes a swig. “I’m not shaming anyone! We’re just hashing things out, seeing if we’re all on the same page. I think we can all agree she’s not just a total darling; I sure wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”

Robyn drains the thing to half-capacity, then shuts the cap, underhanding it to Fiona.

“I used to think she looked… okayish?” Fiona says, having a sip. “Back when she was in Guy-Mode, I mean. That kinda attractive where you aren’t attracted, but it’s like, ‘yeah, I can still see why people are down?’ But as a girl? Now that we KNOW, she’s just… Ugh, she’s all cute! Like – And when I was helping her change, and she let me brush her hair? It’s so silky I just wanna dig my fingers in it…! If we dated her, I’d call hair-dibs.”

No water bottle’s gonna help quench that kind of thirst.

“Guess that brings us around to the real kicker, the one for all the marbles,” Robyn begins, and lets her skull clunk back against the wall. “What do we actually DO about it?”

Gee, who knows, what possible answer could there be to this conundrum? Joanna lifts herself on one arm and aims a flat stare her way. “Maybe… Oh, I don’t know, tell her? Ask her out? The hell else is there?”

“We could always repress it, say nothing, watch her slip through our fingers as she marries some diamond-studded, upper-crust Dust-industry hussy, and condemns us to forever wonder what could have been?”

“Screw that.”

Hopping up off the stationary bike, Fiona towels off some sweat, and heads to plop down next to Robyn. “Assuming… she’d even want to. Assuming she’d even be up for… Um. All this.” Fiona points between the trio. “Us, our whole thing. We… we don’t even know if that kind of thing’s okay with her, or if she feels the same way, or – or if she might, but not for everyone...”

Ugh. Right. All the painful logistics of actually making something like this work. Been lucky enough that the duo had fancied turning trio, but a quartet takes a miracle.

Suppose they’re really doing this, actually getting serious about the topic. Joanna stands from the bench to join her partners. “At least we don’t have to worry that she’s straight.”

Her girlfriends get a giggle out of that, ranging from Robyn’s half-hearted to Fiona’s full-on snicker. “Pfft, no way. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her talk about boys like that. I think she hates guys as much as guy-stuff.”

It’s abnormal for Robyn to be this pessimistic, especially when she was the flirtiest to begin with. “She was raised with rarefied tastes. I’m just saying, she might like girls, but it doesn’t mean she’d want a dirt-poor Mantler on her arm. Or… arms. Plural.”

Deadpan, the faunus fires right back. “It’s not like YOU’D have anything to worry about! May melts any time you two touch nowadays! And don’t think I haven’t seen how she practically creams her jeans over that ‘Princess’ thing! Bet if I called her that, she’d just laugh.”

“Fi…”

“Nope! When I’m right, I’m right!”

When she’s afraid, more like. She’s not one to wallow in it, but even their cheeriest member has her insecurities, and sometimes even the softy wants to feel a little sexy. Joanna drops a bracing arm around the sheep’s shoulders. “Sounds like someone’s making excuses not to try.”

Fiona whines, but leans into her, irrespective of their collective sweatiness.

Streets ahead of them both, Robyn’s still overanalyzing all the angles. “Not to mention, she might already have someone else in mind. Even tonight, she's off at a party with Schnee, again!"

Come on, they’ve covered this before. Joanna tucks Fiona’s fluffy head under her chin, then reaches further across to bap the side of Robyn’s.

“She’s ‘at a party with Schnee,’ because it’s a party for another Schnee. At the Schnee Manor. Where the Schnees have been known to live. It doesn’t have to mean what you think it means.”

“Hey! It could still–”

“Nuh-uh. May’s snob parents did us a favor dragging her along, getting her out of our hair so someone – you owe me – could bring this up.”

Robyn returns the wayward water bottle to their bags, and while she’s at it, goes for her scroll. “Should probably check on her, come to think of it.”

Liar. After a talk like this, she just wants a reason to probe some more. Casually slip in some suggestions to see how May’ll react. Joanna knows how she operates by now.

But damned if it wouldn’t help with the nerves. Jo pulls Fiona right up onto her lap so she can get at their gym duffels herself, following Robyn’s lead. “Ch’yeah, fine. Let’s nag her in the middle of a massive social event. That’ll make her wanna give us a shot.”

“Not! Helping!” Robyn says sourly, and alright, maybe this is a good time to lay off, if their leader’s getting this bent out of shape about telling a girl she likes her – despite her statistically sound track record. “I just want to see how she’s doing. And maybe, when she gets back, we… sit her down and–”

“And just tell her,” Joanna finishes, putting her out of her misery.

“I was getting to that!”

Joanna and Fiona watch as their girlfriend swipes through their team’s status display, past their aura gauges to their group chat channel. While either of them could just as easily fire something off, Robyn’s already angling for a casual conversation starter.

(DRAFT) [MamaBird]: Hey, May. We need to talk when you’ve got time.

Or maybe not. Brothers above, is she TRYING to freak the girl out on purpose?

“Too serious,” Joanna observes. “Y’remember how our last We Need To Talk went? She’ll think we’re ganging up on her again.”

Fiona wriggles in her lap. “Weeeeellll, technically we… kinda are?”

“Uh-huh, ‘cept we’re the ones stuck shaking in our boots this time.”

Muttering complaints of disloyalty in the ranks, Robyn backspaces for another run at it.

(DRAFT) [MamaBird]: Hey, hon. Hope you’re okay over there. We’ve all been thinking about you.

Humming, Fiona’s ovine ears flicker in contemplation. “Also true. But, maybe that’s too sappy to start?”

“A little front-loaded,” agrees Joanna. “We can get all sentimental and shit once she’s here.”

“Reeeeal helpful, girls.”

There they sit, huddled together, grousing over Robyn’s scroll, mired in the minutiae of Just How To Pop This Off, drifting into tangents sharing memories about May, their hopes for a positive response, their contingencies if they’re shot down.

Time whirrs by while progress slows to a crawl, until finally their hand is forced at five minutes after the hour – reminding them they’ve burned the back third of their scheduled gym slot when Team FFOG come knocking to kick them out.

Once the gang’s gathered up their gear, they hit the showers for a quick rinse. A few meditative minutes breathing in the steam must’ve cleared up the traffic jam in Robyn’s brain, because by the time they’re out and on the way back to the dorm, Robyn’s finally, finally taken Joanna’s age-old sage advice: ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’

Time to shoot their shot.

>>[MamaBird]: Hey. @Mayflower

>>[MamaBird]: Bored to death yet?

Chapter Text

May Marigold is still not a heavy drinker.

But she's starting to wish the champagne in this flute were some of that 180-proof blackout rum her parents keep in the minibar of their billiards room.

“...which is patently absurd; I could buy and sell that woman’s entire company in a snap,” Father grouses beside her, waist deep into yet another complaint about yet another business rival making the rounds through Schnee Manor’s main hall. “If she thinks she has us beat with her little Vacuan sweatshop, she’s got another thing coming.”

“Hm,” says May, who has Absolutely Been Paying Attention.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if her brood had a hand in these lurid rumors… It could be time to pull some strings with the papers. Turnabout is fair play, after all…”

“That’s what they say,” May drones, only somewhat certain that people say that.

“No matter. Tonight, they’ll all see the truth in front of them – the Marigolds are, above all else, a principled, traditional family model! Not like these other philanders, deviants and lickspittles...”

The presentation of that Principled Family Model is the very reason why May’s attendance was made mandatory. The entire extended family, really, meaning Auntie, Uncle, and Henry have been tooling around the grounds too. The rumors of infidelity, children out of wedlock, cover-ups, they’ve all been picking up steam since May’s fuckup five-or-so weeks ago.

Her parents have been absolutely furious, and while the twisting, untraceable nature of the rumors themselves make it hard to suggest May’s direct culpability, her fear of exposure’s tweaked that desperate, people-pleasing panic response to keep her head down and comply with their wishes, to not rock the boat, to act like the perfect son.

Mother and Father had leapt at the first chance – tonight – to performatively parade the Marigold clan around for the rest of the aristocracy, dressed to the nines, showcasing an unquestionably warm and loving familial bond with one another. ‘We’re great! We’re happy! Nothing shameful to see here!’

Except for May, hiding in plain sight, her abnormality buried deep where none can see.

She’s not sure the stunt’ll do a friggin’ thing to curb the rumors. Playing with others’ dirty laundry may as well be one of the official Atlesian national pastimes. This whole afterparty is such a waste of an evening, and she swears she can feel her neurons individually disintegrating with every word of self-important wankery her brain’s forced to process.

Though, that’s assuming her brain cells aren’t already suffering acute cerebral hypoxia from being suffocated by this godsdamned neck-trap, choking in a cloud of cologne. Stupid fucking tie. Stupid tuxedo. Don’t get her started on her present state of dress, because this event’s been miserable enough without her dysphoria tossing logs on the fire.

Having to stand here, introduced as The Marigold Heir, The Good Son, The Future Man Of The Family, pressured into giving Manly Handshakes with her too-big hands, a few tiny wispy hairs on the knuckles, not dainty at all. Into responding with a lowered voice, words gravelly and hard-edged, harsh to speak. Clapped on the shoulder, the too-broad shoulder on a misshapen frame, by bony businessman fingers that have never given an affirming touch. Did Father mention she was a Huntsman? A big, strong, burly Huntsman – not a Huntress, of course, not even the less popular gender-neutral ‘Hunter,’ clearly a HUNTSMAN. Man who hunts. No fair ladies here. No Princess to be found.

May glowers down at her champagne. She thinks she’s going to be sick.

“Father,” she finally interjects, during a lull in his pageantry. “I think I saw Winter over by the refreshments, I should probably go and…”

Father eyes her suspiciously for a moment, considering whether he needs to swiftly correct the interruption. His stance eases then, and he gives a terse nod.

“Hrm-hm. Yes. It would be prudent for the two of you to spend more time together. Our connection to the Schnees is paramount to the family’s future. Go on, then.”

‘Put a baby in her already,’ he means. Ugh.

Weakly saluting him with a waggle of her champagne glass, May slowly steps away, her vacancy in the crowd immediately filled by some high-powered lawyer representing the Lednik Lumber Concern.

She had not actually seen Winter in a while, not since the show in the garden, but she needs a minute, and beyond her usefulness as a convenient excuse, she’s likely to be one of the few feeling as put-off by this party as May is.

Weaving through the movers and shakers, profit-takers and strike-breakers, May downs the last of her drink and deposits it on the nearest waiter’s tray.

A faunus waiter, because of course. Flecks of iridescent chitin line the backs of his forearms poking out from his shirt, and up to the nape of his neck.

Wonder how much he’s being paid for this. Wonder if he’s even gotten a break all night. She knows there’s no way he’s allowed to join a union, not while he’s stuck serving the Almighty Snowflake.

May spares him an apologetic look as she passes by, dipping through clots of gala-goers to one of the offshoot hallways, walking until the clamoring dies down to a tolerable level.

The halls here are so bleak, and oh-so-familiar. Almost a mirror image of the Marigold Estate, a pale marble white replacing the abyssal tones of navy blue. Makes sense, all these rich bastards probably use the same contractors. Probably don’t want to deviate too far from the pre-approved style.

Only halfway down the hall, she just… she needs to stop, lean against a wall. This is all too much, she needs a second, she needs to breathe. Fuck.

With the desperation of a drowning woman, she claws at her tie, her stupid tie, loosening the thing until it sags from the back of her neck, undone. It’s hideous. Just like her. It’s constricting and wrong.

As accessories go, she’d rather be wearing her scarf. Her special scarf, her new favorite. All the grasping and struggling of her own fumbling too-big fingers is shunted aside with the memory of Robyn, swiftly and snugly fitting her with that soft orange scarf… Soft but callused archer’s fingers, touching her neck, gently tying it on, a symbol of her friends’ favor – Robyn picking it just for her, Joanna snapping pictures for posterity, Fiona fluffing up at the sight of it all. Like she was something pretty. Like she wishes she actually could be.

But then, her stupid, wandering daydream has Fantasy-Robyn stare her down wearing that unfairly attractive smirk, and give a slight tug on the loose end of the scarf, drawing her in, surrounded by the three of them, and– Nnnnnope, May shuts that down.

Back to bleak reality, back to this shitfest gala. Back to undoing some of the damage she did to her tie, because the click-clack of heels – not like her, not like her polished, patent leather loafers, men’s sizes, feet too clunky, why is she even a stealth operative – approaching from the far end of the hall.

“Not enjoying yourself, Marigold? Unhappy with my father’s hospitality?”

Oh, thank the gods. It’s just Winter. Not the highest on her hierarchy of people she’d want to talk to right now, but the bar’s so low it’s been buried. Besides, that hint of humor is a good sign, and now Father won’t catch her out in the lie over where she’d scurried off to.

“You know me, Winifred. Being seen really isn’t my thing.”

Winter steps closer, taking up a disaffected slump against the wall just across from her, swirling a wineglass May knows she’ll never actually drink from. Just a prop. Her disdain for the overblown event is clear in the fact she’s chosen her Academy dress uniform over an actual factual dress for her formalwear. The last three years they’ve been enrolled she’s taken advantage of the substitution, and May can’t blame her one bit. The only concession she’s made for the party is to let her hair down for once, parted and pinned aside with a silvery hairpin.

“Really. After all these years, you still think mangling my name is the height of humor. I might just have to casually forget yours, as well.”

May snorts sullenly. “Oh, please do.” Please, please do. Permanently.

Winter gives her a skeptical, but curious look, but the question in her eyes is short-lived. Instead, she takes a drink from–  Hold on, that’s all wrong.

“Grape juice?” May asks, casually, her hesitation betraying honest concern. Winter just nods. Yeah, that makes more sense. Was about to worry things’d finally hit the tipping point. They might not be ‘friends,’ so to speak, but… still.

“In all seriousness, this is hardly the worst of these we’ve suffered this year,” Winter comments, staring past May’s shoulder and out into the main hall, churning with its visitors.

And that’s true; it’s not, she’ll concede, the worst night of her life, not the most unbearable of these ritzy galas she’d been hauled to by far. Winter’s little sister – Weiss, she always forgets! She always thinks it’s ‘Whitney,’ but that’s Whitley who’s the brother, WEISS is the little sister – gave a decent performance out in the gardens, a small stage erected in the middle of the terrace to put her on full display.

The gala had been touted as some celebration of her newest musical debut, maybe a record deal, but real talk: the whole affair’s just been an elaborate way for Jacques ‘I’ve got more money than the Gods’ Schnee to shove his shiny trophy in society’s collective face.

That said, it… it wasn’t exactly bad, the whole recital portion. That girl’s got a good set of pipes for her age, and knows how to use them. But more than that, the lyrics… Much to her surprise, May had actually felt something. Relatable, even: ‘Why won’t you let me hide from me’ is something she’d sure love to ask her own damn mirror.

It makes her wonder: is that girl really just her father’s perfect porcelain doll, and the powerful, evocative lyrics just a marketable illusion cast by a well-paid music industry executive? Or is it the tepid daughter that’s the mask, and those lyrics are where she poured her passion, her sentiment, her sadness? Did the apple far as fall from the tree as it did with Winter, who only narrowly pulled against Jacques’ grip herself?

Time will have to tell. Either way, May hasn’t been able to stop humming the first few bars every so often, as embarrassing as it is.

“No, you’re right…” she eventually replies, joining Winter in people-watching down the corridor. “Better this than my dad’s dinner club.”

“Or the Debutante’s Ball.”

“That shitty Midsummer Masquerade.”

“The Oenophiles’ Garden Party.”

“Wasn’t that at the Komaracs’ old place? With the–” May makes a scruffing motion with her hands.

“With the carpeted restrooms, yes.”

“Fucking rich people.”

Winter dares allow the corners of her mouth to lift. “...I believe we’re also rich people, Marigold.”

Doesn’t she know it… for all the good her net worth’s done her, her peace of mind, her sense of self, her freedom and lack thereof. She was born for the express purpose of carrying on the aristocracy into another generation. She could have all her basic human needs attended for the rest of her life, without having to lift a finger, she could simply coast on nothing but a name and an unearned place at the very top of society.

And all it would cost her is dying inside.

It’s just… It’s hard for May to keep a straight face. She’d rather be just about anywhere but here, in this gilded birdcage, at the top of the tower. Fed and pampered, but her wings clipped, her song stifled. How these people can bear it is unfathomable, all of them hyukking it up and eating hors d'oeuvres as their souls are hollowed out, as ‘crater-trash’ from the faunus ghettos starve and shiver and die of the fucking flu and–

And that’s what they want from her, to be just like them. It’s why they bring her here, surrounded by the embodiment of all she dreads to become – in body and mind. Just like them. Man of the family.

She really, REALLY would rather be anywhere else.

She’d rather be with her team right now, back on campus – Sweating it out in the gym, if she remembers what their plans were? And they know how much May detests getting sweaty, so if that’s not proof of her convictions, what the hell is, right?

She’d rather be down in Mantle again.

She’d rather be May.

“What, did that truly shock you? You’ve gone quiet.”

May jolts. Kind of spaced out… again. Winter’s annoyance at the awkward silence is eclipsed by amusement for a fleeting second. “Forget it. You’re right. We’re… rich people.” She shrugs a wordless ‘what can you do?’ and hangs her head. “Do we really have to go back out there? Can’t we just let our parents think we went off to find a room to fuck in?”

Winter contorts the fingers of her left hand into a complex arrangement, and a luminescent disc slowly spins to life beneath May’s feet.

Having grown used to the empty threats over the years, May arches an eyebrow, the two forced into a temporary détente as a rather fretful-looking redheaded maidservant pushing a cart down the hall stops short of their quarrel with an ‘Oh!’ Clearly afraid to walk in between, lest she be caught in the crossfire.

Dissatisfied, Winter returns her other hand to her imitation wine, allowing the primed gravity glyph to disintegrate and the maid to scurry through with a stammering of unnecessary apologies. May allows enough pause for the woman to be out of earshot before she turns and impishly amends her statement.

“Sorry, that was crass of me. A chamber in which to procreate.”

Growling something acidic about men – a retort that skewers May more deeply than the other heiress had even intended – Winter has a draft of her juice to calm down.

“While I’m sure they’d be ecstatic that we’d ever cave to their demand, I have enough on my plate this semester without adding that sort of rumor to the rotation. Besides, I thought you’d have enough rumors to deal with yourself; this whole… ‘Mystery Marigold’ everyone’s been telling tales about. It’s ridiculous, really; I of all people would know if your family actually had a girl our age. Brothers know she’d have made for much better company.”

May’s stomach, already dropped to rock bottom, somehow scrounges up another few feet to fall.

“...I don’t want to talk about it.”

From the quickly aborted expression of surprise, she can tell Winter hadn’t expected such a sullen deflection, rather than tacit agreement of its absurdity. May kicks herself again. She’s giving away too much, she should have just quipped or something! Now Winter might even think there’s a kernel of truth to it!

“In that case, all the better we should go make another passing appearance.”

Tch. As if May could even be ‘passing’ right now. Damn it. Stop– Stop thinking about that. Now’s not the time, break down later. Why can’t breakdowns have the godsdamned decency to wait ‘til it’s convenient to be a heaving, knee-clutching wreck on the floor?

“Guess so,” she mumbles more softly than intended, fighting to rebuild her facade. She pushes off the wall and starts for the foyer doorways, subconsciously shortening and softening her strides to better match Winter, once she’s slid alongside.

“That said, shall we stick to the usual plan?” she asks of May.

“Grab each other if we need another out?”

“Yes. The usual.”

Their reluctance may have kept them moving only a hair faster than standing still, but with great disappointment, they arrive at the doorway back into the festivities and push right into a wall of sound: Orchestral renditions of Weiss Schnee’s new single, inane chatter, clinking glasses and plates.

“You’ll get no argument from me.” May gives her erstwhile companion one last look of mutual unease, and the pair break formation, each seeking some new nook in which to hide themselves, public enough to be seen, but not enough to be seen by those they’d most rather avoid.

Winter carves a straight path through the churning bodies, to where her little sister is cloistered inside a mass of Old Money family heads, singing the singer’s praises. The chilling effect of her appearance causes the swift retreat of a man’s pudgy hand from Weiss’ shoulder.

Not wanting to run into Father on the right – over by the main entrance doors, bidding goodbye to some business partner – or Mother chatting with her coven of other Wives Of Wealth, May follows the path of least resistance to the refreshments. Now that her stress-spawned nausea has given her a slight reprieve, now might be the time to stuff her face.

She’s actually been pretty hungry the whole night, having gone so far as to skip lunch before leaving campus… much to her team’s chagrin. She just didn’t want to deal with appearing even slightly ill-fit for this miserable suit (and thus incur a scolding), or suffer the whims of her bladder midway through the performance (and thus, also, incur a scolding).

And yet, to this day, she ALSO remembers an instance – she couldn’t have been more than seven or eight – incurring the overblown irritation of her tipsy mother for hitting up the snacks at another such party, for ‘acting like a little pig’ by eating too much Fondue Neuchâteloise, and consequently making it appear ‘as if this family can’t afford to feed our children.’ Emphasis on afford.

It was nothing. It really, really was nothing. Just some mildly irritable words from a posh woman with nothing better to do, but they stuck. Enough for her to think twice and check thrice before approaching food at a gathering for which it isn’t the main event.

The maid from before is almost finished stocking a buffet table with fresh platters, and May spares her a half-wave. For all Winter’s talk of avoiding gossip – and gossip is a house staff’s bread and butter – perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if this lovely lady were to tell tall tales of catching a bitter lover’s quarrel in the darkened side-halls, putting some ice on public expectations.

Once she’s out of the way, May finds a nice spot near the rear of the table to affect another disaffected lean, and begin picking shyly away at the latest samples from Schnee’s kitchen. At least it’s not as dry and tasteless a spread as she’s used to seeing here.

Bzzz! Bzzz!

“Whuffuh-hellsh-at?” May mutters to herself, with a mouthful of tangy cocktail shrimp. What The Hell That Is is, in fact, the scroll in her lower-right tuxedo pocket, which she swears she’d set to silent for the sake of the musical main event. Actual silent, too, that Double Super Secret Silent setting, silent-sans-buzzing, even if she were bugged.

Taking into consideration her prolonged state of full-bore dreariness tonight, this temporary diversion might just be a stroke of luck. Unless it’s, like, just one of those shitty spam texts peddling penis enlargement pills which’re, like, the exact, diametric fuckin’ opposite of helpful in her current situation.

But before she can uncask this treasure trove of texts or academic newsletter updates or dick-pill entrepreneurship, she needs to retrieve her scroll, and do so without betraying her raging disinterest with her surroundings. If she did, one of these old gargoyles would tattle on her for her disrespect towards their venerable host. She’ll just… play the role of the Savvy Boy-Businessman, checking her stocks, or hydroponics futures, or some crap.

Lips pursed, brows partly raised, nose up, eyes flat with impassivity, May sets aside her cocktail fork to retrieve her scroll and opens it with both hands. The unnecessary propriety of the action is humiliating.

>>[MamaBird]: Hey. @Mayflower

>>[MamaBird]: Bored to death yet?

Robyn to the rescue. Finally this night has some redeeming quality. Wonder if her worrywarting sixth sense kicked in.

>>[Mayflower]: Regrettably, I still draw breath!

>>[Mayflower]: But I won’t for long, if you don’t do something about it.

>>[Mayflower]: Distract me. Talk about anything. Literally anything.

While she awaits a response, May tempts social scorn to spear just one more shrimp with a cocktail fork, and ruminates on the contents of the charcuterie board.

>>[MamaBird]: Ha. Meant more along the lines of ‘actually speak to you’ talk, but we understand.

>>[Mayflower]: We?

>>[Tiny]: We’re around, too. done working out.

>>[BoPeep]: hi may! (◕‿◕✿)

>>[Mayflower]: Ah. The gang’s all here.

>>[Mayflower]: Except the part where you’re not here, and I’m in hell, actually.

>>[MamaBird]: Is the shindig still shindigging? I thought it would be winding down by now.

>>[Tiny]: ...aren’t the old geezers getting tired at least?

>>[BoPeep]: is it that bad tonight??

Yes, it is. It’s one long-running reminder of how trapped she is. Trapped in this city, this party, this family, this role, this suit, this shape, each stratum more excruciating than the last, all optimistic daydreams of ever truly escaping shot down before they can take flight.

But they don’t want to hear about that. Don’t deserve to be bothered with it, or how pathetic she is for being bent out of shape for getting to attend a fancy function, eat fancy food, wear fancy clothes. Won’t want to hear her bitching about the privilege of her birthright. Not when sweet girls like them deserve all this luxury and more, wasted as it is on her.

No. Just stick to the mundane.

>>[Mayflower]: I’m wasting my valuable time carousing with the most pompous gasbags Remnant has to offer.

>>[Mayflower]: Seriously, Winter’s little sister sang for, like, half an hour, and the rest has been nothing but peacocking.

>>[Mayflower]: My feet hurt in these shoes, ties were invented by the Grimm, and this tux is my mortal nemesis.

>>[Tiny]: oh, right.

>>[Tiny]: you already got kidnapped by the time I got back to the dorm. didn’t get to see. take a pic.

>>[BoPeep]: selfie time!

>>[Mayflower]: Fuck that! I look gross!

>>[MamaBird]: You’re going to disappoint the lady? Take a pic, Mayday.

Seriously!? Now, of all times?

But they asked… They probably won’t make fun, and Robyn told her to do it, and– And the fact she’s astonishingly susceptible to promptly doing just about anything Robyn orders of her is NOT a facet of her personality she needs to be analyzing at this very juncture, thank-you-very-much!

Damn it.  How fast can pull this off without anyone noticing? ...Or blurring out the camera focus?

Miles across the floating city, back in the team dormitory, three scrolls chirp a friendly noise, and three hands blindly grab for them. That was quick!

>>[Mayflower]: Whatever.

@Mayflower has uploaded HDPHOTO_0031.sif

[Open Image Attachment?]

Contained within: A reasonably focused high-angle shot of one very disgruntled-looking May, loitering in front of a loaded buffet table, her poker face steadily cracking under the weight of her embarrassment. She’s suited up and stewing in it, and whilst her teammates are keenly aware of how she’d be happier wearing a trash bag, how it’s exacerbating The Bad Thoughts for her, that… she IS still kind of rocking it.

"It makes no sense,” pouts Fiona, hanging backwards off the side of her bunk. “She's sent us tux pics like this before! Why is it all attractive NOW?"

Joanna playfully shoves her shoulder. "Because you're gay, squirt."

"So are you, you... big hot lug!"

"Ladies, ladies, please. We can all be gay."

Robyn is – as always – completely correct.

>>[Mayflower]: Told you I look like shit.

>>[BoPeep]: girls in suits can be hot!

>>[MamaBird]: Lambchop speaks the truth.

>>[Mayflower]: except it’s not making me feel like a GIRL to be wearing a suit right now

>>[Tiny]: so, what you’re saying is, we need to buy you some lingerie to wear under there.

“Joanna!”

“What? You wanted to push a few more buttons and see how she reacts? Here you go!”

May picked a bad time to grab another dry cracker from the charcuterie board; she really needs to stop trying to nosh right as she checks her replies, or she’ll keep all-but-choking every time. Some asshole in a red velvet smoking jacket gives her the stink-eye for the disruption.

Buying her LINGERIE!? The hell? It… it was one thing to go clothes shopping with the girls, that was okay, that was FINE, but the topic of scanty nether-things was intently avoided after Fiona got all scandalized at the thought of her not owning any, and May had to shut down her insistence at adding a bra-fitting to their evening plans.

But, is that actually a thing that friends do? Buy each other underwear? ...Intentionally aesthetically appealing underwear? Because it COULD be some of that enigmatic, intrinsic girl culture she missed out on, getting socialized the wrong way ‘round growing up.

Nope, nope. STOP overthinking, stop, it was just a joke. Just a silly bit of banter. Nobody’s ACTUALLY thinking about it, about the implications of the possibility! May sure isn’t! Just gonna sandbag the topic with a diversion tactic...

>>[Mayflower]: I bet at least 3 of these unwrapped mummy men are wearing lingerie right now as a sex thing, that wouldn’t make me any different than them.

>>[Tiny]: for giving me that mental image, you owe me Ⱡ5,000

>>[Tiny]: and some of those little deviled eggs I see behind you

>>[MamaBird]: Which we’ll use to hire a lawyer, to sue for even more in emotional damages.

>>[MamaBird]: The Lien, that is, not the deviled eggs. Unless…?

>>[BoPeep]: dont sue may! thats mean!

>>[Mayflower]: If it’s coming out of the family coffers then yes, please do.

(DRAFT) [Mayflower]: Sue me harder, Mommy.

Before May can completely obliterate the last dregs of her dignity, a miracle seizes her thumb above the [Send] button, and she quickly remembers in a panic that sarcastic tone isn’t so easily conveyed through text. Backspacing like mad, she goes for something less likely to be misconstrued!

>>[Mayflower]: Otherwise I’ll just have to repay you some other way.

‘Less likely to be misconstrued,’ she had thought. Like an idiot. Like a clown, a tuxedo clown for rich people, whose gilded flower brooch squirts only the finest mineral seltzer, whose exquisite horn-honking can rival a philharmonic orchestra. She’s already got the obnoxious bow tie! Now they’re gonna think she’s offering sexual favors! With her shitty-ass wrong-body and everything! Brothers, strike her down on the spot, reduce her to a pillar of ash in the hopes some of these fucked-up fogeys will choke to death on her, so she’ll have actually done SOME kind of good for the world with her existence.

>>[MamaBird]: I can think of one: Are you SURE there’s no other way you can give yourself an easy out to come back here?

>>[MamaBird]: Pretend you’re sick?

>>[Tiny]: Yeah, spontaneous case of shrimp poisoning.

>>[Mayflower]: That’s all well and good, but who do you think gets punished if a guest gets sick from the food?

>>[BoPeep]: oh right… nvm

>>[BoPeep]: guess that rules out bumping into a waiter w/ a food tray

Wait a second, that’s not too unrealistic. The classic full-plate-of-food fiasco. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s played that card. Sparingly, because she’s not that suicidal, but it’s been about a year since the last time she played it, and she hadn’t even had the excuse of being tipsy!

May hadn’t actually wanted to drink tonight – courtesy of that eternal threat of outing herself in an uninhibited state – ‘til Father Dearest stuffed a glass in her hand and told her to act her age. The growling beasts of social anxiety and disapproval pale before the deep satisfaction of an implicit ‘I Told You So,’ should Daddy’s lightweight son thoroughly embarrass him in front of his business prospects, causing a scene…

Operation ‘I’m Literally So Done With This’ is go; agent’s insertion into hostile territory already commenced, all equipment is on-site-procurement. Mission directives are as follows – Load up a plate of food. Prioritize wet, fragrant, high likelihood of stainage, something to soak through both blazer and dress shirt. Select a target of opportunity. Make a damn fool of herself and risk the punishments and panic attack so she can go home and be miserable in the company of her friends, and maybe cry a little when nobody’s looking.

>>[Mayflower]: Doesn’t rule out me holding the food. Or ramming into someone who really deserves it.

>>[Mayflower]: Any requests?

>>[Tiny]: Robs just dropped her scroll and squealed

>>[MamaBird]: I did not. Slanderer.

>>[BoPeep]: (she did)

>>[MamaBird]: Oh, dust, please tell me you can ruin Jacques Schnee’s suit.

May wouldn’t need to buy the others birthday presents for a decade if she pulled that one off, assuming she lived to tell the tale, but as she takes a cursory scan of the room, it seems Jacques-ass has moved from his post midway up the imperial staircase.

Only once does she have to stop and give a handshake, canned laugh, and a quick excuse as she snoops her way through the foyer and up the stairs herself, tracing the trail of Remnant’s richest man. She catches but one glimpse of his horrid mustache as he guides Weiss away from the gathered guests and ducks into an office in one of the upper wings of the mansion. Here’s hoping she didn’t disappoint him in front of his minions, much as May’s planning to do for her own Dad.

There’s no way she could have actually pulled it off, but it was a whimsical thought. She flips her scroll to camera mode and leans against the banister, making sure she’s partially obscured by one of the ‘I’m definitely compensating for something’ sized suits of armor on either side of the stairwell before she takes a covert panning snapshot of the churning partygoers from above.

>>[Mayflower]: No dice. Just wheeled the evening entertainment out back to chew her out.

@Mayflower has uploaded HDPHOTO_0032.sif

>>[Mayflower]: See anyone else we hate?

>>[Tiny]: is the headmaster there?

>>[Mayflower]: No. And I didn’t think we hated him that much!

>>[MamaBird]: Speak for yourself. How about Alga Arrowroot?

>>[Mayflower]: Who’s that?

>>[BoPeep]: retired mil overseer! from that frisk campaign in the crater >:(

>>[Tiny]: didn’t that guy die already?

>>[BoPeep]: oh yeah! good riddance d(‘v’ )

>>[MamaBird]: Think I spy me the CEO of CCT&T? Grey suit, blonde toupee. Over near the melty swan ice sculpture.

>>[Mayflower]: Want I should get cocktail sauce on him?

>>[MamaBird]: Do it and you get a kiss.

...As if. May’s thrice-damned idiot heart goes and quickens for a few pulses at the impossible thought, once again blowing something inconsequential out of proportion. This is Robyn Hill. She’s ALWAYS like this, always has been, always will be, this is just how she talks to friends. It even rubs off on them, too, in all the ways that Joanna and Fiona’ve found excuses to make casual, flirty jabs over the weeks!

If only they knew how much it smarts after that initial tickle of endorphins, when the ache of the implicit ‘Not Really Though’ blooms like a bad bruise on her heart. They don’t mean anything by it, they’re not trying to hurt her, and May knows this, and doesn’t blame them, it just… it would be easier if they cut it out, already. They’re probably doing it to make her feel more welcome among them, make it SEEM like they’re not excluding her from their attraction to girls, even when she looks nothing like one and she knows it. Sounds nothing like one, either. Or acts, or– There’s the dysphoria again. Thanks. Thanks, brain. You callous harpy.

Damn it, she wants to go home – Time to get this over with. May sends one last reply before she starts a rolling recording, slides her folded scroll camera-up to hide next to her tuxedo pocket square, and ambles back down to the buffet to prepare her weaponry.

>>[Mayflower]: Don't make promises you can't keep, Hill.

“So. Y’think she really did it?” Joanna asks.

While the team dorm had been buzzing with chatter while they’d actively bounced messages back and forth with May, but since that last reply, it’s been radio silence from their member in the field for nigh on twenty minutes. Enough time for giddiness to wear down into wonder, with a few minutes left before worry.

“I hope she didn’t get in trouble, like, bad trouble…” says Fiona, guilt telegraphed through the droop of her ears. “Or that she thought she super-definitely had to! We were just having fun, we don’t want her to get hurt...”

Robyn squints down at her scroll, reading and re-reading May’s reply to her amorous little offer and dissecting it like a frog in Combat School biology class. Was… was it too much, or not enough? ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’ Does May WANT her to keep it? Or is she annoyed at her for making it? Why can’t she? Can she not keep it because May doesn’t want it? Wouldn’t let her? Or– Or does May think it’s because her girlfriends wouldn’t approve, because does she have another thing coming when she hears how they feel about this... 

“Robyyyyn?” Fiona asks, expectantly.

“Oh! D’ah, uh. Don’t worry your little head about it, curly-cutie. We know she’s pulled all sorts of excuses to ditch these things in the past, she’s a veteran in the field. In fact, I bet–”

Bzzz! Bzzz!

“...In fact, I bet that’s her right now.”

It is, in fact, her. Another dismally-lit selfie, this one of a fatigued, red-eyed, but smug-looking May in the back seat of a chauffeured luxury aircab, stripped of her bowtie and tuxedo jacket. The massive, splotchy, brownish-red stain across her chest would be patently worrying, were one unaware of its tangy origins.

The second file attachment catalogues in beautiful high-definition video the deliberate mucking-up of a rat bastard with a regional CCT industry monopoly – and gods, is it beautiful to watch – only to trail into an immediate outcry of incensed voices and a loud, furious hissing of a first name they’d rather not be reminded of. The recording cuts off not long after.

At least she’s able to fake a smile, still – means whatever happened wasn’t enough to completely wreck her for the night, means there’s still time to cheer her up and apologize for pushing the issue! That they might still be able to sit her down, and chit-chat about other things. That they might still be able to find the perfect moment to ask about… well. Them.

“She’ll be here in five,” says Joanna, voice still hoarse from their group gigglefit, the video clip still rolling in a loop on her scroll. “We still gonna do it?”

Robyn lounges against the windowsill, watching for approaching airships. Watching for the night’s guest of honor.

“I owe her a kiss, don’t I?”

And Robyn Hill is a woman of her word.

Chapter Text

“Ssh, I think I hear someone…!”

Pressed flat against the door of the dorm room, Fiona tries to leverage her heightened hearing to play lookout, giving a heads up on their fourth member’s impending arrival.

Joanna does not ‘ssh,’ and continues to fluff pillows as loudly as possible, on purpose. It’s her prerogative as chief foreman of the blanket fort construction site.

“Uh-huh, and the last three someones have all been false alarms.”

“Well, EXCUSE me for not knowing her by her footsteps alone! ...And through a door! These ears aren’t magic!”

“I don’t know,” purrs Robyn, “they do make a little magic when we stroke them just right.”

Fiona smushes her face even harder against the cold metal door to hide the incipient blush. Score.

It’s a rushed, flimsy plan they’ve scraped together, but aren’t they all? Now that the trio have all landed on the same square vis-a-vis The May Situation, they’re still set on ending this ongoing gridlock pronto, by talking to her while they’ve still got the nerve.

However, being ruthlessly thrust into the fires of the douche-crucible all evening for that miserable Jacques-off Session at Schnee manor, having the essence of all she hates being shoved down her throat for hours on end to the point of having to escape via humiliating herself, can’t possibly have left her in the optimal mood.

The smart thing to do would be letting the topic lie until another night, but when has reckless optimism ever failed them before? ...Actually, best not to ruminate on that.

If they’re doing it tonight, then their collective crush will need to decompress, and thus, they’ve hurried to crank the room’s coziness up to eleven, swapping out their pajamas and pulling out all the spare quilts, blankets, bedsheets and cushions Fiona’s had stowed away in her semblance to build a cozy, perhaps even cuddly nest. Same with the fiddly, flickery old fairy lights she had in there, now strung along the high edges of the walls and criss-crossing to the bunks in a glimmering weave. Some snacks have been procured if May were to want any non-fancy foodstuffs, the holo-screen projector set up on an overturned cardboard box if she feels like cooling down with a movie or a game – they just want to make her comfortable!

Right before they, y’know, confess their attraction and potentially make her uncomfortable enough to jeopardize their amicable relationship, their team stability, their coordination, their chances at the Vytal Festival, their grades for group assignments, their reputation, all their hard work radicalizing her against her tyrannical birthgivers and the establishment they perpetuate–

Robyn groans and cards a hand back through her hair, set free from its classic updo. If she were being a truly responsible leader, like the proper, Atlesian model to which all her Leadership classes have demanded she aspire, she wouldn’t permit this sort of risk. Allowing personal relationships, especially intra-team relationships and the establishment thereof is commonly cited as one of the foremost threats to a team’s efficacy and longevity, and altogether a sign of dangerous unprofessionalism.

But then, she’s kinda been making sweet, sensual lesbian love to two-thirds of the rest of her team already, so. There’s that.

“They’re getting closer now…” Fiona warns, “They’re not stopping, it might be her! Get in position!”

Fiona trips over herself pushing away from the door and jumping into her bunk, crossing her legs ever-so-casually on the edge. Joanna leans against the dresser on the opposite wall, making sure not to jostle the knee-high sandbag wall of pillows. Robyn snatches up a fabric bundle in her arms and stands in the middle to complete the formation.

Any last-ditch discussion on how to approach The May Situation is cut short, the meeting officially adjourned as they hear the telltale beeps of the security system.

The dorm door whooshes aside, and in she steps: One frazzled May Marigold, shirt gravely stained, tuxedo jacket folded over one arm, and reeking with the tang of tomato and horseradish. Frowning, she warily eyes up the three poised to surround her amidst the trappings of an unexpected pillow party, as the automated door slides shut just behind.

“Whatever you think I did, either I didn't do it, or there's a good explanation.”

“No, we SAW what you did,” chuckles Joanna. “We watched the link.”

May dips her head, rubbing the back of her neck with her spare hand. “Wondered why none of you replied,” she admits, and her tone does evoke a bit of guilt for forgetting to follow up.

With a cheerful giggle, Fiona hops up and steals the saucy tux top off of May’s arm, pitching it over into the waiting laundry basket. “Because we couldn’t stop watching it! You got him good! He was fuming so hard, I think his wig was about to fall off!”

“You did,” Robyn agrees, fluidly taking the reins and lacing her voice with obnoxious grandeur. “And we believe that for such a valiant blow struck against the deadliest beasts of the bourgeoisie, our returning champion deserves a reward! Perhaps to be kept company by three comely maidens of virtue true?”

Joanna snorts behind her hand. Their virtue hasn’t been true for a hot minute.

Before May can manufacture a response, Robyn’s already shoved a bundle of pajamas and scented soaps into her arms, swiftly ushers her towards the connected bathroom. “So shower up, and come hang out with us – Tonight doesn’t have to be a total wash.”

“Except for you,” Fiona adds. “Er, washing yourself. Because no offense, that stain DOES kind of reek? So… let’s see some hustle, missy!”

Bewildered, the burnt-out bluenette stares them down a while longer before her hesitant, uneasy “Ooooookay,” and excuses herself to hose off the cloying scent of cigar smoke, caviar, and wet shrimp cocktail.

Whilst May showers, they shore up their fortifications. Lights toggled to dim, privacy curtain drawn over the window, and Joanna reluctantly willing to part with a scented candle from her secret self-care collection. Honeysuckle’s not too forward a scent, is it?

When the shower sounds cease, everyone cops a squat around the edges of their makeshift lounge, leaving a conspicuous vacancy in the middle. As a moistened May emerges from the bathroom, she takes one look at the open space, pitches her wadded-up laundry into the basket, and collapses into her unsubtly designated spot as planned.

Fiona flicks through some channels on the TV and engages May in some low-stakes conversation, giving Robyn a chance to look, really look at her. She has to be a hell of a lot comfier clad in one of Joanna’s spare raglan tees and some workout shorts than that tuxedo, and she can return to practicing the lifted pitch in her voice.

But Robyn still sees a shadow hanging over her, pooling under her eyes. Her body language, rolled back to the before-times, hunched and defensive. Would it be better to call this off? Or would hearing she’s the target of their hopeful affections boost her back up?

Oblivious to her leader’s frantic situational assessment, May happens to fire off a question that might be their lead-in. “You three do anything else fun while I was gone?”

Robyn gives the signal, a short, upward nod to her girlfriends.

“Not much. Just thinking about what we were wanting to do for date night this week. We weren’t too fussed about the when or where, but we settled on one thing, at least.”

“We want you there, too,” Fiona finishes for her.

“...Y’mean like the last time we all went out?”

How fast are things going to escalate here, if they’re getting down to brass tacks? When should she drop that line about owing her a kiss – a segue she’s still pretty proud of preparing for herself in advance. Crap, how’s her breath? Better safe than sorry.

While May is regarding the screen, Robyn scoots back heavily against the pillows in her nook of the pile, and snags Fiona’s attention with a wave. Through a silent, frantic game of charades, she pantomimes lifting something cylindrical to her mouth and spritzing with her forefinger.

Fiona gawps at her, nothing but confusion on her face ‘til it clicks. Once she’s through misinterpreting her hints as alluding towards vulgar sex acts or a sudden craving for a can of spray-cheese, comprehension dawns in her eyes, and she leans back as well, folding her arms behind her head. Thus obscured, a bottle of breath spray slides from her shimmering semblance, and she tosses it over, behind May’s back.

Joanna’s eyes dart from the projector screen to the motion to her right. Her gears are greased and quick to turn. Catching on immediately, she butts in with an unhelpful response to draw May’s attention away from the others, right as the latter’s curiosity over the awkward silence starts her turning back towards Robyn.

“Eh, not exactly. You’re close, though.”

Robyn waits for May’s head to swivel aside like a pesky security camera, then quickly gives herself a quick dose of minty freshness.

Not finding the answers she seeks with Joanna, May turns back again, and it’s Fiona with the quick save, keeping her from catching Robyn red-handed.

“I mean, you could SAY it has to do with us, prospectively going out, and with you.”

“Uh huh, I kinda got that already,” drones May, not at all getting it.

Arm outstretched above and to the rear, Joanna snags Robyn’s high-arcing overhead toss above May’s field of vision, next in line to prepare herself for potentially puckering up. She takes a hit, then signals for an opening.

“Do you now? You don’t seem very shocked,” hums Robyn, baiting May’s ire to clear the way for Fiona; receiving Jo’s pass, popping a spritz, and seamlessly stowing the evidence in her semblance. Expert team maneuvers all around, folks. Robyn’s so proud.

May clicks her tongue, crawling forward on the blankets and spinning around to face them all, arms looped around raised knees. “Shocked that you actually want to take me outside again after I so supremely botched the last run by being there? Maybe a little.”

Not quite the message she was hoping to send, no, but the hiccups in communication lately might’ve seared it in. Can’t fault her for it.

Folded arms and a twitch of the cheek on Joanna is a sign she’s had it up to here – ‘here’ being a relative, but irrelevant location – with this chicanery, and is about to barrel onward. She mutes the TV in preparation, and Robyn’s eyes plead with her to take it slow, to no avail. It’s going down, one way or another.

“Shocked that we’re trying to ask you out, jackass! If you’d want to try and date! ...Us!”

That lightning bolt of shock, long overdue, hits hard and fast. Petrified in place, there’s no movement from May, except shot-wide eyes flicking between them all.

It’s understandable, Robyn supposes; it’s not often one finds themselves the recipient of a triple-confession. Or maybe they’re just awful at this group intervention thing; feels like they’re two-for-two now on mucking up a smooth delivery.

“We’ve talked about it amongst ourselves, and I’m afraid we’ve all come down with a chronic case of crushing on you, Mayflower. We just couldn’t help ourselves,” Robyn explains, with the aid of some gratuitous hand gestures between her present romantic partners and her team partner, their prospective partner-to-be, all capped with a wink. “And we’d be pretty thrilled if you felt like joining the fold.”

There’s no response. She’d, er... She’d sort of banked on a blushing, bashful, sarcastic response, as per May’s modus operandi. When the hyperrealistic May-shaped wax statue keeps on staring instead, Robyn gives one last, expectant nudge.

“So…? Whaddya say? Think you’d like to turn this thrilling threesome into a fearsome foursome?”

“...N-no–!”

All the air in Robyn’s lungs goes AWOL at once. Her gaze darts to her girlfriends’ faces, and they’re similarly shaken. Yet somehow, none in the room looks more harrowed than May herself, paler than snow, that healthy glow the respite returned to her features already dashed away.

“You don’t– You don’t mean that, so don’t…” Beginning at a timid mumble, May is quick to flare with unexpected ire. “Don’t fuck around with me like this!”

To Robyn’s left, Fiona mouths a ‘Wha–?’ At the far side, Joanna’s expression can’t pick a place to crash-land between disappointment and horror.

May, meanwhile, locks down that grip around her legs, clamping up tight and going quiet again.

“You don’t have to act like you want this. I know you don’t. So just… cut it out.”

Robyn tries to interject, for all it’s worth. “May, we’d never–“

“Do you know how much it hurts?!” 

Stunned again, Robyn shuts her trap as May’s fresh tears dampen the wadded blankets below. What hurts? Are they hurting her? Or is she hurting herself?

“All this… all the flirting, all the– The acting like I’m attractive, like I’m actually in the running, when I was disqualified before I even came out of the womb?!  Pretending a freak like me even has a chance? Making me– Tricking me into getting my hopes up that I could actually be with any of you, even when I know deep down it’s all just a fucking pipe dream?! You’re all nice, okay, and I know you think you’re being supportive, but I can’t deal with it anymore – I know I’ll never be good enough! I’m a MISTAKE, and I always will be!”

Oh.

“Don’t even know what I was thinking, getting it in my head I could ever actually be a huntress, ever fit in with you three… Probably should’ve just stayed in my place, back with those people. But then, I never belonged there either. Or anywhere.” May stuffs her face against her knees. Muffled and mumbling, she concludes like a hammer-blow: “...Shouldn’t have even been born.”

Robyn’s chest proceeds to implode, shards of her shattered ribcage sucked inwards and swallowed in the frigid void of a vital organ that was there but seconds ago. That fast rush of freezing cold, so cold it can hardly be felt over the full-body numb, like when aura breaks out on the tundra.

Oh gods, honey. No.

They all knew it was bad, but they’ve never dug this deep before. The hesitation, the worry from the night she came out, was just the prelude.

Between the three of the Mantlers here, they’d bumped into a few folks in same-to-similar situations as what May’s going through over the years – some of them who didn’t make it, Brothers rest their souls – but only ever in passing, never closely enough to see what damage it can do to a heart in all its grisly clarity.

The level to which this girl seemingly hates herself is something unreal. She’s gourmet Grimmbait. She’s a considerate, well-meaning, people-pleasing young woman always wishing to better herself, and she thinks that love is off the table. To her, that’s just the way the world works, because at the end of the day, that same world hasn’t given her enough proof to think otherwise.

Until now, apparently. It must sound like the promise of a miracle, and if they’ve memorized May’s mindset well enough by now, they’ll know: She doesn’t believe in miracles.

Once upon a time, during some casual conversation, May’d mentioned her favorite fairy tale as a kid: The Girl in the Tower. Pretty damn appropriate, Robyn has realized, when one considers its varied interpretations. As a child, May must’ve gravitated towards the simple, alluring narrative of being liberated from the lofty expectations of her upbringing, unfairly imprisoned by her parents, just like the protagonist.

And, y’know, the whole girl thing.

But the full story – cataloged in musty old academic studies, not the colorful kiddy picture books – is far from having a happily-ever-after. That young girl made to endure years upon years of false hopes for escape, and even when finally given her chance for love and a life of freedom, tragedy still stalks her, a sudden sickness ripping that love away again and leaving her desolated by tale’s end, punished for trusting to hope. Just what she fears is happening, here and now. The three lovestruck Mantlers collectively cast as the final brave knight come calling to the tower, and the thought they’re secretly sickened by her the sickness waiting to steal them away again.

They’d been approaching this like it could ever be something casual, like this confession would line up with the last two the trio had fared; an honest-if-awkward dialogue about their feelings, punctuated with laughs and loving words and a little bit of sucking face.

For them, it’s just filling in the final vacancy they’ve felt in their romantic ranks. For May, it’s confronting something monumental.

Too scared to touch that last colossal landmine of self-loathing just yet, Joanna leads the charge in breaking apart the other points presented.

“Okay, great, that’s your hot take, that we’re just bullshitting for fun and games. But did you ever think, get this, we might actually be flirting with you for real?”

“You honestly expect me to believe three beautiful, normal women ALL want... Want something like me?"

"Duh," Jo says at length.

"Basically," from Fi. "And we got tired of waiting for you to figure it out yourself, so…?"

“Listen to me! That just doesn’t happen, I’m not even a real–“

Joanna slams the bottom of her fist against the frame of their bunks, derailing that train of thought. “If you finish that sentence, I’m gonna slug you in the mouth. And not with my mouth, which is kinda the point of this whole fuckin’ thing.”

May doesn’t finish that sentence, its implication already out in the open air, but she isn’t dissuaded entirely from pressing her point.

“I’m already pushing it just being on the team! I don’t… I know you’re all, like, polite, and nice and shit, so you say you don’t mind because you’re just good people, but I’m not! I’m selfish, I’m rich, I’m Atlesian, my family is a household name – and LOOK at me! I’m basically still a boy in every way that society cares about! There’s the three of you, and then there’s me. There’s always going to be that gap! I don’t… belong with the three of you! It’s always three and one, it’s never going to be four!”

Is that a challenge?

It sounds like a challenge.

“Could be,” Robyn begins.

Because it doesn’t look a damn thing like May isn’t interested. It looks like the answer they’d hoped for was already poised on her tongue, walled in by clenched teeth, but she just... can't.

The fingers of Robyn’s right hand tighten around the truth she knows she could force right into the open if she tried. Could ask her to prove it right here – that she legitimately isn’t interested in any of them, the solution is right there, a pulse of aura away.

But would that even work? Using her semblance would show May the fact, but wouldn’t even skirt close to conveying the feeling, the culmination of years of friendship into becoming a makeshift family, of unnamed, amorous feelings clarified as the truth came out.

No. This time around, no semblance – no ace up her sleeve. Gonna do this the old-fashioned way.

“It could be four. You have a place with us, May; you do, and we can show you, if you’ll let us.”

Rolling up onto her knees, Robyn crawls closer, slow and non-threatening, more patient with her motions towards this battle-hardened huntress-in-training than approaching a wounded doe in the woods.

She makes a point not to go for May’s hands, instead bringing her own to gently squeeze the other woman’s rigid shoulders, tightened so hard she fears they’ll snap.

“You’ve never had this much trouble trusting us before. So all I’m asking is you remember that, and see if you can trust us one more time. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Something about her phrasing must’ve been on point; May loosens her shoulders to roll them in a shrug, and the ‘Maybe’ she mutters might as well mean ‘Yes, but I’m still terrified.’ They can work with that.

“Good. That’s good. So as long as you’re trusting us… Here’s my plan. How d’you feel about a trial run? Just one date, the four of us, this weekend.”

May’s head lifts another inch. A puffy golden eye peeks out from under the veil of her hair.

“Let's pretend you didn't have those doubts. Pretend we’ve been together this whole time. How would you want us to date? What would you want to wear, where would you go? You don’t hafta get your hopes up for the long haul, just one night. And if it doesn’t feel right, if you don’t feel like you belong there, if you’re sure after that it’s not gonna work… Then we’ll drop it. I promise. No more flirting, no more innuendo, no more Princess.”

Hook, line, sinker – May’s head jerks up, scandalized. It feels a little bit like cheating, threatening to shelf that special nickname, when the other three are aware of its efficacy, but it speaks volumes how desperately May clings to it.

“I just don’t– I still don’t deserve...”

“You deserve all kinds of good stuff!” bleats Fiona, “And we’re great stuff, if I do say so myself!” The faunus plants herself at May’s side, placing a hand on her knee. “We really mean it, May. We wanna show you! You’d be making us really happy, if that helps…?”

Crossing the blanket and hopping a stray cushion, Joanna handles the other side, crouching to give May’s upper back a slap as firm as it is reaffirming. “Yeah, we mess with you a lot, because it’s fun – but we’re not screwing around here. And it’s not just some shitty fling we’re askin’ for, you know we’re not swingers. We’d be committed to this.”

May doesn’t jerk away from their touch, and neither does she shut them down. There’s another long pause, not a sound but the dorm block’s central air system thrumming through the walls, until she weakly exhales and whispers: “Fine.”

Internally, Robyn pumps a fist sky-high and brings it down with a rowdy cheer, and her grinning girlfriends must be doing the same. But in the material plane, she calmly nods, and proceeds with caution. “We’ve got a few days. We can take it slow, do it properly. Plan something fancy for the four of us… We’ll show our Princess a good time.”

And then, she throws that caution to the wind. Gliding inward, she massages May’s shoulders and gently presses a chaste kiss to the crown of her head, lips grazing silky, freshly-washed and floral-scented cerulean locks. So close.

“Thank you, May. You’ll see. We promise.”

Things didn’t play out perfectly, that’s pretty godsdamned obvious – Turns out their trio might just suck gargantuan ass at these group interventions, going by their track record. But flying by the seat of the seat of her pants, Robyn’s scored them a chance, and that’s all they’ve ever needed.

The kiss she lays against May’s head isn’t the blistering, toe-curling, triumphant kiss Robyn had hoped for tonight, not by a long shot, but it’s still the kiss she promised.

And before this week is through, she vows to herself, May’ll have the kiss she deserves.

Chapter Text

A date.

‘Date’ is such a weird word. Date. It’s like, some kind of shriveled-looking Vacuan fruit, but also a set point within a frame by which to try and arbitrarily measure the passage of time, and it also means an arranged romantic escapade, and–

And it’s also what she’s going on this Saturday. Tomorrow. A date.

May Marigold (of all people) has a date. (Of all things.)

After that extravagant clusterfuck setting the team on this course just Tuesday night, slotting it in for Friday had seemed far too fast, and not to mention May’s got her specialist preparatory classes running late as usual. They wouldn’t be able to make the most of the night before exhaustion or the final call for airships headed up top puts an end to their evening, and Sunday scratches any late-night plans, if they’ve got school in the morning.

So… Saturday?

Once May’d resurfaced from the depths of her despairing disbelief, they’d actually sat down and talked about it before bed: the simple fact that yes, Robyn Hill, Fiona Thyme, and Joanna Greenleaf do, being of sound mind, willfully and of their own volition without external compulsion of any kind, actually want to go on a date with her.

It had been… a bit overwhelming, still. Because more than just going through the motions, more than just a setup for a casual fling, this means they actually have feelings for her. Of the romantic persuasion. The kind she’s always imagined in those fleeting daydreams, but now they’re waiting right on her doorstep and she’s struggling with her common sense whether or not to let them in out of the rain.

So, they put a pause on it. Even if this’d technically been a confession, no more… no more talking about romance ‘til the day of the date. Just straight facts and logistics and banal banter like any other week, as the auspicious event looms ever-closer on the horizon. No flirting.

They’d squabbled a bit once they ran right into another one of May’s dealbreakers: That despite the fact she’s the one being asked out, that she’s unilaterally financing the whole damn thing. Robyn had insisted, trying to play the perfect gentlewoman, with the others backing her up, but no amount of lady-himbo heckling, sheepy-eyes, and gruff growling could change May’s mind.

Look, she’s rich. So long as she’s still in her parents’ dubiously-good graces, she’s got more money than she knows what to do with. And although those parents do audit her account, she’s got plenty of leeway to spoil her team now and again with some careful excuses, and this is a perfect occasion.

With that in mind, she’d initially voted for a dinner date, in order to haul her possibly-paramours to the sort of disgustingly upscale establishment they’d never have the chance to set foot in otherwise. Reality raised its ugly head to remind her that picking anywhere on her own home turf ups the likelihood of a repeat on getting recognized to untenable levels.

‘Or like, what if we got seated, and BAM! It’s a table next to your parents!’ Fiona had added, gesticulating wildly, ears all a-waggle. And, okay. Fair.

So, a compromise, the best of both worlds: they’ll be headed down to Mantle once again, but May holds the final say arranging their accommodations at one of the finest joints she can find in the lower city.

To make matters simultaneously better and worse, a bit of toothless teasing about their last outing has somehow surged back with a vengeance, now inflated into a core tenet of The Date At Large: They’ll have the privilege to pick what she’s wearing, but only if she gets to buy them theirs.

Kind of anxiety-inducing, realizing she’s once again being playing the role of the May-Mannequin for a group of girls who, ostensibly, think she’s attractive for reasons May herself cannot fathom for the fucking life of her. They wouldn’t dress her ridiculously on purpose, but the What If squeezes out a narrow victory over the odd shudder of delight at being dolled up to their liking. 

But two can play at that game! Or, well, four, but two in that there are two sides, and– Whatever, she’ll get her revenge in due time! She’s gotten to pick out whatever formalwear she deemed fitting for her three favorite women on Remnant, just the way she’s always portrayed them in those daydreams she’s now legally allowed to acknowledge, rather than cramming into her brain’s dankest supply closet.

Still, how far can she push it without it being too far? How alluring is one allowed to dress up three prospective suitors on the first date? Ggh, maybe her choices were a bit daring, especially since leaning too sexy too soon might put such sexy thoughts in their minds, and… and sex.

And shit, if that hasn’t been tangling her up in knots, and not the fun sorts of knots in which one oft wishes to be entangled where sex is concerned. Because May is acutely aware that the other three have long since gotten busy with varying levels of shamelessness in their time together, with how often May’d either walked in on them midway, been warned away in advance, or been left alone in a dark dormitory while they booked a cheap motel room overnight for a bit of actual privacy. She knows they’re… sexually active, as it were. And thus, that they’re very comfortable with that as a facet of their relationship. Doing… doing all sorts of… lesbian sexes to each other, and shit.

But… not May. May, who’d just about sworn a lifelong vow of chastity to protect the innocent women of the world from enduring her disgusting self, up until these three incorrigible chucklefucks bounded into her life and said ‘hey, we’re attracted to you,’ as if that were a thing that can actually happen. And now she’s got to wonder what their expectations are. For her. For… this. For what could become of it, for whether it could ever lead to that.

Like, what if they expect her to put out on the very first date?! Or flip-flopping it turnways, if they’re willing to hold her hand and hug and snuggle, but there’s an implicit veto on explicitness for the duration of the relationship – that they really are squicked out to hell and back by her body, same as she is, and that not only will they not be pressuring her, they won’t be up for anything-ing her. Ever.

May doesn’t know which is worse, but both have simmered on the backburner as a particularly pungent bad feeling for a while now. Rationally, it could be she’s jumping a gun that won’t even be trained on her until after she manages to keep this one trial run date from being a total blunder, but she still has to wonder…

And then it hits her.

Oh, not a novel thought or revelation or anything, no; a shimmering ivory Boarbatusk. Actually hits her. In the stomach, to be precise.

“Sloppy, Marigold. Are you even paying attention?” chides Winter, as snug in her smugness as a favorite pair of socks. “A child could have dodged that charge.”

No, no she’s not, and she’s paid for it with six percent of her aura. Because she just might’ve been zoning out mid-match, more important things on her mind than another routine classwide sparring session to pad out the end of the period.

The Professor’s given them the run of the larger training hall, teams and temporary partnered pairs splitting off at a safe distance to avoid stepping on another group’s toes as they bash, shoot, and smash one another with relative impunity.

As usual, Winter had started out with the productive intention of getting in some practice with her rapier’s main gauche, yet as her practice partner’s attention waned, devolved to simply slamming her with the various ghostly white Grimm spawned from her semblance.

Meanwhile May – wielding a default dagger-and-pistol pair pulled from the stock armaments available for those slow-goers who still haven’t settled on a trademark weapon – has long since grown bored of running this routine. Winter’s given her constant guff because she was once a half-decent swordfighting partner, but can she maybe get over it? May hasn’t been testing out a sword since… what, three weapons ago? (And she’s got to find her fit sooner or later!)

“You go siccing your summons on children that often?” she snipes back, lodging the barrel of her pistol against one of the white Boarbatusk’s four eerie eye-sockets and sending it off with a bang.

Nonplussed, Winter casually traces the tip of her sword along a groove in the tiles beneath them. “My sister certainly does well enough for herself.”

Oh, right! She DOES sic them on children! That’s those good old Schnee Family Values for you.

“Well, I could still floor you if I ever felt like it. Would you like a demonstration? We could even make it a little interesting.”

Distracted she may have been when she got a full load of Grimm-hog to the gut, but goading Winter into playing along, putting her on the spot with a bet, genuinely has been part of May’s plan from the get-go. There’s something she currently needs that she can’t handle by her lonesome, and challenging Winter’s pride is always a surefire hit.

“...Explain.”

“Traditional stakes; victor wins a favor from the fallen? Just one quick favor. No questions asked, and you never tell a soul.”

“Marigold, if you plan on asking me to kill someone for you, you might as well hire an assassin like the rest of the ruling class. I’m sure our parents will have ample recommendations if you ask. Either way, I want more.”

“Wow. Greedy, much? Alright, if you win… aside from owing you one, I solemnly swear to stop teasing about how badly our relatives want us to do the horizontal tango.”

“In writing. I want it in writing. Triplicate.”

And she bites the bait! May smiles coolly, folding her hands behind her as she confidently strides in a semi-circle around the edges of their designated sparring zone.

“And you’ll have it in writing. If you win.”

When Winter makes to mirror her, May makes her sneaky first move, subtly lifting the suppressor attachment from her rear pocket and affixing it to her pistol’s barrel behind her back. Fits on a tiny mesh brass catcher, too. No need to telegraph her play.

Regardless of the realities pounded into them throughout ballistic weapons training, there seems to be a stigma against suppressors among male huntsman students. Whether it be the myth they’re barely of use against the Grimm and their sharpened hearing, that they damage bullet velocity, or out of some machismo-driven posturing that their custom weapon be the loudest fucking thing on the battlefield without some lame little tube tacked on the end, they’ve always been strangely unpopular.

But, May’s not a guy, nor a gun fetishist, and the muffling of her semblance can dampen suppressed sounds down to downright silent. She’d be a fool not to keep one on hand to play a trick or two.

“I believe you mean, ‘when’ I win,” sneers Schnee.

“Eh, I wouldn’t be so sure. Shall we dance?”

“Let’s.”

May evaporates from sight, and both huntresses snap into action.

Years of practice dueling one another has outfitted Winter with a host of options for exposing an invisible Marigold, and May can’t engage her own plan until she knows which she’ll see today.

Burning a charge of Earth Dust, Winter brings one of her glyphs spiraling into existence between them, and conjures up a dense, but unstable boulder, rippling with kinetic energy. A double-flick of the wrist and a bit of Wind Dust mixed in, and it bursts, casting a thick plume of gravelly debris into the air.

One of the classics, then. Alright.

As the haze continues to swirl around the glyph, May scouts their surroundings one last time before they’re both fully shrouded in the stuff. There’s no cover today, no shelter around them to run to, just a flat arena. A clear disadvantage. She could always try diving into the fray with one of the other test groups surrounding them, dodging around their attacks and leaving Winter none the wiser… Maybe, maybe not.

It’s not often Winter’d pull this variation on the smoke-you-out trick while both indoors and accommodating other groups in the periphery; normally she’d only go this far for a pitched one-on-one, where she wouldn’t be interfering with anyone else… She’s going to be too conscientious of getting scolded by the professor for a lack of control to let that mist stray from outside the very specific confines of their own little fight-bubble. She’ll try to contain her little smokescreen in the localized whirlwind, and lunge at any place it’s disrupted.

All in all, best not to stick around, no matter the risk. And fortunately enough, even the great Winter Schnee is sometimes prone to fall for one of the oldest foibles: Not looking up.

From the moment she can tell which way the wind’s spinning, May breaks into a counter-clockwise run, keeping pace with the cyclone’s building speed. Dumping her default ammo, she flicks her weapon’s mode from semi-automatic to burst-fire, and rapidly empties an entire magazine of valuable Gravity Dust rounds beneath her, soundlessly propelling her skyward. Better yet, having more control over the spent rounds, dust backblast, and hot gases leaving the gun lets her limit how much of a plume she leaves in her wake; Winter spots signs of movement in the thickening cloud and slashes through it, but doesn’t seem to detect just how far her foe has leapt.

Meanwhile, what feels like a mile above, May solidly wedges her knife into one of the many hanging pillars supporting the overhead light fixtures. Not quite as good a perch as she’d hoped, though, which leaves her scrabbling with her legs to affect some sort of awkward upside-down spider-cling on the pillar that can support her weight. Another good reason she’s invisible; nobody can see this drunken monkey circus act of hers.

And now, we wait.

At ground level, Winter dances through the spinning smokescreen, her sword stances impeccable as she jabs and slices and stabs at literally nothing at all, and the grunts of growing frustration are music to May’s ears. To stir the pot, May puts her thighs to work holding herself up to free her hands for a second, and empties out those empty casings into her palm – slowly dropping them one by one into Winter’s peripheral vision, just enough of a trace of motion to trick her into another wasted attack.

She almost thinks she can hear Schnee swearing, but that might just be wishful thinking.

When the woman below finally begins to turn her attention higher, to entertain the possibility May might’ve done… well, exactly what she did, she reloads to put a regular pistol round into the hanging pillar supporting the next set of light fixtures, raining down a spatter of concrete chunks.

“Found you!” Hah, and she sounds so sure of herself.

With her weapon lacking an innate ranged function – for which she’s been mildly chastised plenty – Winter falls back on preparing a barrage of fireballs to blast that particular patch of ceiling, and diverts all her concentration to forming the requisite glyphs, replacing the gravelly whirlwind.

Once Winter’s distracted lashing out at the decoy, May flips down behind her opponent, landing with a painful thud that rattles her even through her aura, but is still soft enough to be muffled by her semblance. Creeping up just behind, May holsters her pistol, then hooks a leg between Winter’s, pins back an arm, and topples the other girl to the floor in an immobilizing grapple-hold. The knife’s edge is held to her throat, felt before it’s seen, once May drops the veil.

“Oh, for the love of–“

“Do you think if I stayed invisible, people’d believe you’d just tripped?”

“I hate you.”

“That’s something we both have in common! Now, about that favor–“

Winter wrenches an elbow free and jabs it back into May’s spleen. “Get the hell off of me, and then we’ll talk.”

May tip-taps Winter’s chin with her dagger point, then pulls it back and disengages, the latter woman rolling out and hopping to her feet. May brushes herself off and similarly stands, stowing away her weapons. Class period’s about over, anyway, and Professor Pumice is busy dressing down some unfortunate student on the far end of the room, unlikely to catch them slacking.

Now, she could have showed Winter up for the bragging rights alone, but not this time. Her preparations for the weekend have hit a snag, and one which she needs help from outside her team to untangle.

“I need you to do my makeup.”

“Your… makeup,” Winter repeats, dumbfounded, as if laying the words down more sternly will threaten them into making sense.

Because May needs the help, and she’s not too proud to admit it. The date’s too soon and too important to bet it all on a last minute lesson from some social media influencer’s step-by-step tutorial video. She can’t do her OWN makeup, lest she roll up to the restaurant looking like some kind of slutty jester who lost a fight with a Beringel, and she can’t ask Fiona to do it again, because she’s trying to surprise Fiona! Surprise all of them, really.

But like hell is she coming out to Winter Schnee. Allies they may be on the ballroom battlefront, but she’s still far more entrenched in the aristocratic standards, and it’s often impossible to get a read on where she breaks with them, and where she rigidly falls in line. May isn’t about to ask her to remove that stick up her ass just so Winter can immediately beat her with it.

So, just… Stay calm. Level head. Lay down the bluff.

“It’s this whole thing, right, to… To fuck with my parents? You know, because of that whole Mystery Marig–“

“The ‘Mystery Marigold’ girl. That was you, who started the rumor? ...Or are you merely hoping to fan the flames?”

“Yyyyyes?” May answers vaguely. “Anyway, I need it for tomorrow night. And I’m not talking anything too extreme, just… what, uh, what a girl would need for a night on the town. Classy. Like you would, if you actually had a social life.”

Winter’s nostrils flare, and her stare is thick with the expected disapproval. But, despite all the posturing, something about May’s strange urgency – and certainly not the stipulations of their duel, which she has literally zero interest in honorably upholding – is enough to sway her.

“…Be at my dorm at five-thirty, sharp, or you get nothing.”

“Oh, come on!” exclaims one Robyn Hill,  “I swear you’re changing these under the table!”

“Nope, says it right here! Tiaras at dinner are for eligible single ladies only!” Fiona drops the stack of hastily-made ‘Classy Culture’ flash cards back onto the tabletop they’ve claimed for themselves in the Academy library, and pouts. “Look, I wrote it in pink marker! Am I holding a pink marker right now?”

Robyn narrows her eyes, pointing Fi’s way. “You’re holding EVERYTHING. Holding it all in those… those cute, tricksy little hands.”

“My semblance doesn’t LITERALLY keep everything physically squished inside my hands. Did you know that? It’s important to me that you know that by now.”

“And another thing –  Does that mean May could wear one, but we can’t? Because we’re not single, but we’re still eligible, considering we’re trying to take her out. So what’s the rub?”

“I don’t think Atlesian bigwigs were ever planning for polyamory to be a thing, Robyn.”

A loud thunk tears the two from their little moment: a tower of textbooks landing on the other side of the table, and Joanna slouching with folded arms atop it.

“This is stupid. May doesn’t care about any of this; we’ve got actual classes to study for, so why the hell should we be wasting our time cramming our brains with bullshit Old Atlas culture?”

“We need to impress her!” protests Fiona, and while Robyn admires the energy, that’s not quite why she’s got them brushing up on etiquette.

“No, you’re right: May doesn’t care. But the stodgy people around us WILL care, and we don’t want to draw extra attention to her. This is already going to be stressful enough as it is, I don’t want us causing a scene because we…” She flicks a thumb towards the discard pile at the table’s center. “I don’t know, forgot what fork goes with salads, and which is for fish.”

“We’re all adults! We mind our basic table manners, and that’ll be that! We don’t need to learn about fuckin’ fancy forks and antebellum service staff hierarchy and who gets shot out of a cannon if they fold their napkin wrong.”

“People might look over, and…”

“Whatever fancy place she picks for us, it’ll be a fancy place in Mantle. That’s our territory. Even the richest middle-managers tryin’ to court their boss’ third-least-favorite secretary won’t be that obsessed with whatever we’re doing as long as we look the part – which, remember, is May’s damn problem now.”

That is true; their collective choice to surprise one another has put the ball mostly in Marigold’s court. “Speaking of which,” Robyn thinks aloud, “you got her dress sorted out, right, Lambchop?”

“Dress, jewelry, and shoes!” Fiona announces. “Er, the jewelry’s fake, but I don’t think anyone’ll be getting close enough to notice but us, and we don't care about that!”

“Good deal. Bundle it up in a bag for our little swap-meet tomorrow morning and I might even forgive you for cheating me on these cards.” Grinning wide, Robyn sets a boot against the table’s edge and props her chair onto its back legs just in time to avoid Fiona stretching over for a chastising thwap.

Scooting one out for herself, Joanna takes a seat and taps at the small, glowing standby button on the table, the inbuilt holo-projector emitting a low whirr as it wakes up to spread a shiny screen across the empty space before her.

“You two go ahead and have fun wasting perfectly good prep-time. I’ll be checking out info that’ll actually be helpful. Like, oh, I don’t know… dance steps? In case she takes us somewhere with dancing? The thing she’s probably had a thousand classes on, and none of us can do worth a shit?”

Robyn and Fiona look at her.

Joanna looks at them.

Robyn and Fiona shove their cards aside and hastily follow suit.

Saturday. The Big Day. Five-thirty, on the dot.

Here’s hoping this isn’t yet another colossal mistake.

Knock. Knock.

Winter opens the door, and comes face to face with a whole lot of nothing. Just the other end of the hallway, a closed door to another dorm.

Impassively, she steps aside for a moment, counts to five, then taps at the controls to shut and seal the door, locked to all but her absent team members and faculty. As it swishes shut, she leans back against it and surveys the Nothing.

“Alright,” she says sternly, “let’s see it.”

The Nothing shimmers hesitantly, and May drops her semblance. In preparation for the evening, and to give herself plenty of time for fucking up along the way, she’s already changed into the dubious attire provided by her team, left for her in an inconspicuous brown paper grocery bag. That, and popped some caffeine pills and an aura stabilizer or two, because she’s going to need the extra energy to scurry around invisibly for the next hour or so, let alone if there’s another emergency like last time.

Those jerks. Those stupid, smug, pretty, dumb compassionate idiot jerks had gone and done it; one of them had actually hoofed it all the back down to Mantle, to what she can only guess was the very same dinky thrift shop they visited the other month, and grabbed for her a dress essentially identical to the one they’d teased about bringing home for her the first time around... Hell, it might actually be the same one, for all she knows. She’d never given it a try to see if it fit, nor paid it much mind to start with. How the tables have turned.

Now, May Marigold is cutting the figure of a refined lady out for the evening in her long, slit-leg silver evening dress, portions of its length adorned with curvy patterns of glinting sequins. Conscientious of their fourth member’s self-consciousness, they’d made sure to choose something without a plunging neckline, giving her more room to add a bit of artificial emphasis to the ‘assets’ she unfortunately lacks.

Moreover, to help with the fuss over her arms, a trendy shawl was provided with the other accessories – a silky deep blue number that drapes from her shoulders to meet in the middle, tied neatly over her chest. With her hyperawareness of that irritating lump on her throat? A ribbon choker of the same accent shade. For the fact she’s used to actually having some godsdamned pockets for storage space in her clothing? A thin-strapped purse that sits comfortably on her hip. No losing her scroll this time around.

Making her outfit a callback to some teasing two months prior might’ve started as a joke, but… they actually put some thought into this, didn’t they? Actually considered her comfort...

But then, those assholes also picked her out some heels, so they aren’t complete angels. And no matter how much effort – and how much of May’s money – they’d invested, she knows that on some level, she still probably looks seven shades of stupid. Still probably looks like a man in a dress. Whether or not she’d landed plausible deniability with her pretense for doing this, Winter’s still going to call her a freak. She can almost hear it now...

“Huh. You clean up… almost decently.”

Okay. Not quite the claymore mine she’d expected to step into. What, all it takes is cramming her into a dress to get compliments out of Winter, even while still thinking she’s a guy? Pfft. And to think, there are still people at this Academy laboring under the assumption this woman is staunchly heterosexual. May can peek out from her own closet and see the one Winter’s trapped in just across the hall.

“Although your chest is rather asymmetrical.”

May blanches, and with little care for her audience, fumbles her padding back into balance. Whilst she’s busy groping herself, the other girl flags her over to the vanity and pulls out the stool with her foot.

“So. Where’d you get the dress?”

Chest settled on the outside, the inside is still rattling with her restlessness, knowing she’s a single slip away from exposure. She’s all but screaming it from behind the cocky smile she pastes on as she waddles over, bitty-baby-steps in her damnably precarious footwear. “This old thing? Oh, nobody special. Just made a couple scroll calls; dialed up a little old couturier by the name of Van Palette...”

Prim, perfect Winter almost drops the makeup kit she’s unpacking all over herself, and does a double-take, eyeing the dress with disbelief. “You convinced THE Van Palette to do a rush-job on a dress for a prank?”

“Pfft, fuck no, it’s from a thrift store down in Mantle.” She waits a beat, then touches her fingers to her lips. “Oh! I’m sorry; I should’ve known you might not know what a thrift store is! You see, when people who aren’t rich are done with–“

“Just sit the hell down, before I glyph you out the window.”

“Do you see her?”

“No, but…” Robyn gives Fiona her most clueless shrug. “I mean, I don’t think she’d just be waiting around, would she? There’s no way she’d let anyone else see her girling it up. Could be we’re gonna make a pitstop first so she can change?”

The other three have already gotten that out of the way, and in Robyn’s opinion, they make for a pretty snazzy squad, even if looking this posh takes a chip out of their rough and tumble Mantler credibility. Maybe they can torch a cop car on the way home to reset the karmic balance.

But hey, it’s a pretty a cheap price of admission to pay for getting to see her girlfriends decked out in the finest threads May could surreptitiously charge to a pre-paid proxy card, under the guise of funding her team’s upgrades for the upcoming Vytal Festival.

Joanna loves being the group’s big beautiful butch, but she looks damn fine a few more ticks towards femme, too, in a Valish spin on a classical Mistrali Ao Dai dress in deepest forest green, bronze bangles and patterns popping out to grab the eye.

Fiona’s always been the softest, cutest in their ranks, but tonight – Since May’s the de facto baby, outvoted three to one – the sheep faunus has her time to shine with a little bit of sexy. Her dark purple midi dress seems to glow wine-red under the light, like peering through a bottle of the same.

And though she doesn’t get the same kick out of ogling herself, Robyn’s no less proud of her own appearance, her tight golden gown and pearl-white jewelry turning her into an instant runway model. She’s pretty sure this outfit alone’ll pay for a semester’s worth of weapon maintenance if-and-when they have to hock it someday.

That just leaves May, whom she’d very much rather be staring at than an empty landing pad. Did she not like what they’d gotten her? They made sure to double-check her actual sizes this time, didn’t pick anything too revealing...

“She’s supposed to meet us at… Pad B, six-twenty-five,” Joanna recites, reading the text message off her scroll. “We’re booked for seven, wherever she’s dragging us; no way we’ve got time to mess around elsewhere and still make it.”

“Maybe she’s gonna change and sneak out here to give us a shoulder-tap?

“Or,” frets Robyn, pacing uneven lines by the edge of the pad, “the stress got to her, and she’s still upstairs panicking.” She slows to a halt long enough to divert her nervous energy into brainpower, and forms a single thought before returning to the routine. “I’ll give her five more minutes, then I’m doubling back to the dorm to check on her.”

Ignoring Robyn’s restlessness, Fiona flicks an ear towards a low engine noise in the distance. “Whoa. I wonder who that’s for…” she ponders in an awed whisper, attention turned to the sky.

The others chase her gaze, catching on a long, opulent, limousine-style aircab, stretching its way out from behind one of the Academy’s surrounding security towers. Tinted windows, muted-burn engines, LED undercarriage lighting. The craft takes a lazy curve through the air above, drawing far more eyes than just their own, coasting to a halt at the edge of the landing pad before them.

Rather than the door popping open of its own accord, which would be the simple, sensible thing to have it do, a drone chauffeur in a jaunty cap – or is the hat just built into its head? – exits the driver’s compartment of the airship, pulling the rear compartment doors open with a deep bow. Its voice, tinny and struggling to be heard over a short burst of pre-recorded fanfare, begins playback as it holds the pose:

“Zzt. Madames Hill, Greenleaf, and Thyme, thank you for your patience. Your chariot – Courtesy of YourChariot™ Luxury Transport Services Ltd. – awaits. Tzzt. Please mind your step.”

Robyn elbows the shorter of her girlfriends.

“I, uh. I think that one’s for us, Mini-mutton.”

Joanna chuffs and starts for the vehicle, hurling a quip over her shoulder. “And you thought May’d be the one feeling in over her head tonight.”

Hey, she might still be! Robyn’s about to speak up to say as much as she pat-pats the bowed drone on the braincase and hops in herself. Especially considering once she gets a good look, May still isn’t anywhere in– 

“Ow!”

Alright.

Alright, so, she’s started their last-ditch attempt at dating May off by kicking her in the shin. Not Robyn’s smoothest moves, but that just means there’s room for improvement as the night goes on! Gotta stay frosty! Wait, of course they’ll be frosty, they live in Solitas, for gods’ sakes, why do people even say–

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she offers in apology to a recently-gone-visible bluenette, hunched across from them on the long, curving velvet couch that takes up the back of the cabin. “It was courteous of you, protecting us from your blinding beauty, but worry not, we’re well equipped to handle it.”

 “Gods, don’t strain yourself,” May grumbles meekly, scooting further around the couch to leave everyone some extra leg room. “I just didn’t want to chance it, anybody else trying to peek in.”

Fiona files in last, dropping in on Robyn’s other side as the drone shuts the door behind her. The faunus almost whaps the side of Robyn’s head with a sheep-ear, amid her excitable gawking all around. “Oh, wow! This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill fancy, this is uber-fancy! Hey, don't these things sometimes have like, hot tubs inside? They do in the movies."

Visibly relieved at being able to put off the discussion of how well she pulls off tonight’s outfit – and Robyn’s not going to let her skate on that point! – May leans back into the cushions.

“Yeah, and the rental service even had one on deck. But I wasn’t about to add more hassle to my agenda.”

“Finding one with good jet pressure?” jokes Robyn. “Extra bubbles? Hydromassage?”

“No. Worse. Swimsuit shopping.”

Joanna kicks her feet up on the long, low coffee table between them, and Robyn catches May’s indignation that Jo gets to wear flats. Is someone still fussy about her footwear? D’aw. They had Fiona bring some of May’s regular shoes in case she really can’t hack it, but… c’mon.

“Aww,” Joanna joins in, “she’s seen us all in our underwear for years, but a bikini might be too much for shy little May?”

“Tch! I meant… I meant having you all doing it for me!” There’s that quick dip of discomfort on her face again, clear as day even in the limousine’s low mood lighting. Before Robyn can leap in with a quickdraw topic change, May pivots, coming back at them with a smarmy counter. “A-and… who’s to say I’d even need to pick out anything for YOU? I could leave you three jerkwads skinny-dipping.”

Robyn cracks up, hugging her current girlfriends close. “Well, lookie here! Kitty’s got claws.”

With Joanna under left arm, Fiona under right, she kicks one leg over the other, feeling a little bit like a hotshot movie star. Maybe she is a little bit out of her depth where this rich ‘n ritzy business is concerned, but damned if she’s not going to take advantage while it lasts. Might as well play it up; be the glamorous type of gals that actually have a shot at scoring themselves a Marigold.

May can tell they’re trying, softly giggling at their fascination with the opulence; Fiona toying with the high-def holo-display on the table to get some lo-fi beats pumping from the surround-sound stereo, Joanna rummaging through the fridge adjacent the minibar, and Robyn reveling in the unfamiliar atmosphere.

“Just don’t get too used to the lush life, ladies. You know my parents don’t like it when I make expenses they can’t audit.” May slides over to dig her scroll from her purse, and pings the chauffeur. The world sinks for a second as the engines tap their Gravity Dust, and the craft lifts off, cruising through the air traffic lanes of Upper Atlas on their way to the disc’s edge, the lights of the night looking like a sea of winking stars through the darkened windows.

Y’know, scrap that bougie business about feeling like a movie star. Now Robyn’s got a far better vibe. She’s feeling more like a glammed-up, seductive, diamond-heisting cat burglar – and tonight, her girl gang’s set their sights on one prize jewel in particular: They’re gonna steal themselves the heart of a Marigold, or die trying.

Well, not, like, die die. ‘Make inconsolable idiots of ourselves’ die. Which isn’t really dying, but. Whatever.

Fingers crossed.

Chapter Text

The ride to the restaurant itself isn’t that long, that was never much of an issue.

In fact, May wouldn’t’ve minded much if they’d taken the scenic route, gone and circled around for a long cruise over the edge of upper Atlas’ cityscape, near those small swaths of farmland and verdant, climate-regulated vineyards she’s rarely seen up close, or even killed some time in the mountains.

Alas, the reservation only holds so long before their table’s up for grabs, so there’s not too much room to dilly-dally. Regardless, the closer they draw to their destination, May keeps wanting to press the proverbial snooze button and give herself an extra five minutes.

It’s not just because of her nerves.

It’s actually kind of pleasant, really, just sitting back and watching her teammates poke around the limousine, taking sarcastic jabs at the life of luxury they’d never had a chance for, yet enjoying the rare indulgences all the same.

But… her wish to stall their arrival’s not NOT because of her nerves, either. Because however much time and however much of her parents’ money she’d invested in making this evening glamorous, May kind of doesn’t know what in the fuck she’s supposed to be doing. How she’s supposed to begin, what lines’ve already been drawn for their relationship, and which ones she’s supposed to be jumping with reckless abandon.

She’s only ever experienced dates from the outside, as the tagalong, as the extraneous fourth wheel. Now, that fourth wheel’s SUPPOSED to be there, and she’s second guessing herself at every turn. When’s the right time to talk deep, mushy feelings, instead of taking it easy? How is she supposed to respond to a flirty line, now that she’s allowed to maybe-just-maybe believe they mean it?

Fiona had the stereo set to some mellow mood music until they’d cleared the floating city proper, but found the karaoke app not long after, and as the ship descends into the airspace of their home town, the Mantlers have taken up belting out hilariously bad covers of old pop songs from decades long past. May loves the energy, but her voice isn’t good enough for that; she leans back and just… watches.

Every so often, they’d turn back to look at her. And she’d rush to smile, politely, forgetting she was already smiling, or struggling to whip up a witty rejoinder about the song, or how awful their crooning’s been.

This is supposed to be their night. Her night, apparently, and… she’s not sure how to do it right.

All that talk about it being a trial run for the other three to prove their genuine intentions, but May’s mind won’t stop formulating the fear that she’ll be so damned boring she won’t be able to prove herself worth a date number two. And they’re her team, so she can’t exactly hide her shame by ghosting them forever and pretending it never happened if she crashes things! All this extravagance alone won’t help pay them back for humoring her, but she’s got to do something, she needs them to believe she’s a good investment of their time.

They’d… probably scold her if they knew she was thinking like this. They already had, a bit, back when she demanded to be the one bankrolling the outing – Saw right through her and that classy old upper-Atlesian upbringing with its overtures of profits and payouts and damn near bribing them monetarily to compensate them for liking her.

But it’s still kinda true, isn’t it? That they’re settling pretty low, for people who’ve hooked an heiress. A reclusive, angst-ridden, sarcastic brat with decades worth of classist brainrot she’s still unlearning, with personal boundaries so complicated and arbitrarily tangled. Just… just a weird shadow of a girl playing at being a real one, but still never one they’ll ever be able to acknowledge in public, gone the moment she’s pulled into the light. Why would they want a sometimes-girlfriend?

The thought of being public about this, if it all goes well tonight, is inherently alarming. Because when she’s not marinating in the briny, disgusting dread of being disowned, of course she wants to imagine a life with them! But… a life like that seems so impossible. Barred off by all the pain and heartache and complicated consequences if ever the wrong person found out, caught her trying to do more than just live a half-life out of the closet.

At least her choice of destination tonight’ll spare them a rerun of being recognized. Classy, but literally more down-to-Remnant, down in Mantle. Her parents would never set foot in the filthy squalor of a four-and-a-half star restaurant, but she’d still made doubly sure that they had other plans for the evening in the upper city. The same likely goes for any other classmates and family acquaintances; it’s such a narrow niche, the upper end of lower-class, which… Fuck, she knows she’s just repeating that to keep herself from psyching out. But she has to hope, right?

And as for Winter, at least it felt like she’d bought the bluff? That it’s all just a silly, sophomoric prank on her parents, fueling the rumor mill as a bit of revenge for hauling her to that miserable party, and nothing more, just like all the dozens of times in years past they’ve dared to do the same. Winter’d seemed skeptical, a little dismissive of the idea, but like, it’s Winter? When doesn’t she? So, that’s… that’s fine, right? Definitely not skating way too close to accidentally outing herself. Shit. Getting her makeup done had better’ve been worth it.

Doing a last-minute check on said makeup in her scroll’s front-facing camera, May’s mostly-certain it was. Her face, besides the strain of poorly-contained anxiety, looks softer and sweeter, more conventionally feminine than her default scowl.

Hopefully the others think so, too. May flicks her scroll shut again and leans back on the cushioned seat, fidgeting with a finger running up and down over the window controls.

While she’d spaced out to panic, the others’ve been betting amongst themselves just where they’re headed, which of the handful of higher-class businesses in Mantle could fit the bill, pointing them out excitedly as the ship cruises over, and May shooting them down one by one.

At least, until the autopilot drone chimes in over the sound system to announcing their imminent arrival, consequently putting an end to Fiona’s repeated ‘Are we there yet’s before May even gets to play the disgruntled parent by threatening to turn this ship around.

The craft begins its descent towards an elevated landing pad perch, supported by angled struts just off the side of a sixteen-story black limestone building in east-central Mantle. Nestled inside a cluster of banks and insurance firms, the surrounding district’s a few grime-shades cleaner than the rest of town.

After hanging in a holding pattern for a few other airships in the queue, they gently touch down, drone keeping the engines running as it once again, superfluously, shuffles out to open their doors for them.

The restaurant’s ritzy enough to warrant the short strip of red carpet that brings them to the entrance, but not quite enough to afford heated fans to keep the chilly night air from nipping at their skin. The four women maintain minimum composure as they otherwise charge for the door as one, running up on a doorman who can’t possibly be getting paid enough to stand around out here. Couldn’t they put his little podium on the inside?

“Welcome, welcome, good evening,” he greets them, poorly concealing his stuffy nose. “Name for the reservation…?”

“Er, yes, reservation, it’s– It’s under Hill?” replies May, giving the others a shrug as she steps forward to do business. What? It’s not like she could go and use her own family name!

The man frowns at his digital tablet, swiping a stylus over the list. “Underhill?”

“No, no, just Hill.”

“Understood.”

“Under Hill,” Robyn emphasizes unhelpfully.

Joanna chuckles from over with the rest of the group, and May catches her muttering under her breath: “Think I know somebody who wouldn’t mind being ‘Under Hill’...”

As the doorman verifies the booking, May’s head snaps around with a cherry-red blush beginning to burn across her features… only to find her dates already focusing on Fiona, clearly the intended target of the crass joke. Her gasping overreaction’s gone and blown her cover, though, as the other three freeze, turn to take in May’s expression, and unanimously light up with abject lottery-winner glee. Good going, Marigold. You played yourself.

Blissfully ignorant, or mercifully pretending to be, the doorman finishes his validation and ushers the gang inside, back into the blessed embrace of heated central air. 

The Felicity Rock Supper Club appropriately occupies the top two floors of the Felicity Rock Hotel, the lovechild of a stately high-class restaurant and an art-deco piano lounge, all lacquered mahogany and high ceilings, gilded furnishings cut with clean geometric patterns. Built back during one of the Dust Booms, if May recalls, but she doesn’t bother to bore her team with trivia just yet, else they’ll be held up in front of the many mining-inspired marble frescoes to grouse about the exploitation of the workers. They can do that after they’ve got something to munch on!

To the north, tall wall-length windows provide a gorgeous view of Mantle below, the overworked city still thrumming with activity as it tips into the evening hours. A small pop-out stage occupies the eastern side of the venue, marked with a set of mostly-unattended instruments, given a wide berth by the surrounding tables.

There’s no large performance tonight, the stage curtained off to leave only the jazz pianist running solo, providing a moody, mellow backdrop for the diners, and a rhythm for those daring enough to take the dance floor.

She’d done a lot of insomnia-fueled research on her scroll before she’d settled on this place, restlessly tossing and turning in her bunk, thumbing through pages of promotions, and she hoped that this place and its general aesthetic would be modern and lively enough to wow her team and set a romantic mood, without tipping the scale too far, taking the excess too seriously.

The team’s table reservation takes them to one of the many dim alcove booths around the sides, provided a bit more privacy than those out in the open. May’s found herself pressed in between Robyn and Fiona, Joanna just over the faunus’ shoulder.

As the waiter promptly seats them and begins to solicit their choices in dinner and drinks – And of course the finest wines here are cheaper than the lowest swill back there in the limo’s minibar – May gives her order and takes a second to scan her teammate’s faces for any trace, any indicator of how she’s doing. How much they’re enjoying this. Whether she’s gone too far, or not gone far enough.

Please, let this not be a total disaster.

Please let this last.

“I don’t think they’ll let me back in the Crater if I try this.”

Fiona wrinkles her nose and gives the mound of fish eggs in the tiny mother-of-pearl spoon another scrutinizing look. “Like, I think my family’ll smell it on me.”

To start the evening off, and continue the ongoing theme of a lighthearted, one-off night of wasteful spending at her parents’ expense, May’s called for a sampler platter during the appetizer course: Beluga caviar, poached oysters, escargot and foie gras, the overrated sort of shit she’d been forced to subsist on at those dreadful parties all these years.

And now, she gets to giggle behind her hand as her team tries out the tastes of the rich and spoiled themselves. Worth it.

"You people actually ATE this on a regular basis?” Joanna asks, sniffing at a slice of rank-smelling cheese – Ⱡ600 per pound, on the market. “I thought it was, like, a joke on all us poors!"

“And this is the low end of the menu, I’ll remind you.” May loads up a piece of flatbread with duck liver pâté, heinously violating table manners by talking with her mouth full. “You’re lucky we didn’t– Mmh. Didn’t get it all coated in gold flakes. They do that up in Atlas.”

On the other end of the etiquette spectrum, a very rigid Robyn has been lost in her thoughts, scanning the table layout again and again, and staring expectantly at her silverware. “But... where’s the finger bowl? Why do we have only one knife? I was specifically instructed there’d be two knives here.”

Wait, they didn’t actually think she was going to drag them to an actual, factual, highfalutin’-ass society dinner party, did they? Or that she’d want them to give a damn about the traditions?

“What, you expected the full silver table service? Oh! And let me guess: If you order soup, you’re going to be extra-sure to scoop it ‘thitherwardly?’”

Robyn, looking guiltier by the second, fidgets with her napkin. "We just didn't want to cause a scene."

“...Gods almighty. I wanted to take you all somewhere nice, but you know I hate that shit too! This–” May gestures widely to the rest of the restaurant, to their exorbitantly-priced platter of unpalatable delicacies. “This is about all I can tolerate. And even then, I wanted to play it up so we could… have a laugh at it, y’know? Have some fun picking away at it all, at me being… born rich, and stuff.”

Pay you guys back for giving me a chance, she adds in her head. So you wouldn’t think less of me for growing up like this. So I won’t be a failed investment. So I’d fit in, if three became four.

May can tell some of the tension deflates from the group in how, immediately, two sets of elbows find their way onto the table, Joanna slumps back instead of sitting ramrod straight, and Robyn immediately swaps the positions of her knife and fork with a heaving, audible groan of relief.

Here’s hoping things flow a bit more smoothly, now that nobody’s holding their breath.

Shaking her head, Joanna doubles down, both her hands raised.

“I shit you not, a bird. Saw it the last time I was in for counseling; headmaster’s actually got himself a secret pet bird.”

May doesn’t quite remember how they got here – somehow the conversation had swerved from new team attack names for Vytal over onto gossiping about Atlas Academy faculty – but she’s glad for how easygoing the date’s been so far, how strangely simple it is to talk about anything and everything, avoiding the romantic Megoliath in the room.

Even if she DOES think Joanna’s full of bull on this one. “Nope. Ironwood’s all business, there’s no way he’s letting a bird crap all over his paperwork.”

“He does have that… quirky, clumsy side sometimes?” Fiona points out, playing Dark Brother’s Advocate. “Like, maybe he’s trying to work on a soft side! To ‘better connect with the youth’ or something!”

“Learning to be less blunt doesn’t automatically make a guy start up an aviary!”

Joanna finishes a sip of her champagne and sets the glass down, holding a hand out to Robyn.

“No, I’m– Like, Robbie, semblance me. I roll up early to his office for the appointment and before he saw me, swear to the gods, he was talking to a bird like it’s a fuckin’ person. More like yelling at a bird, really? Thing didn’t get scared or flap off, just sat there squawking back. Pissy little thing.”

Robyn goes ahead and gives her a hand, and with a quick pump of aura, their table’s alcove pulses green. “Now, I’ll be damned,” she says. A bird after her own heart, it seems.

“What kind of bird gets lost so high up?” Fiona swirls her pointer finger around the rim of her empty wineglass. “This climate can’t be good for them. Maybe down in the boreal forests, but...”

Shrugging, Joanna drops their leader’s hand and goes back to ladling her soup – towards herself, what a scandal. “Tsh, I don’t know, a big black one? A raven, maybe? Didn’t get to hear much before he told me to go wait in the hall. Was griping about the bird being late from Vale, so maybe he got it imported? I’m no fuckin’ birdologist.”

“As a Robyn,” says Robyn, “I’m offended at your lack of care for my people.”

“Your people, huh?” Fiona drones. “So, birdbrains?”

“I do not need you to cut my steak for me! I can handle it myself!”

The accused glances up from her task, leaned over with her silverware to neatly slice May’s filet mignon into smaller bits.

“Nonsense! Our dear Princess deserves to be spoiled!” coos Robyn, lifting up a sumptuous, garlic-butter-seared morsel with her fork. “Here comes the airship, say ‘aaaah...!’”

Rolling her eyes, May lets them land on the other two. “A little help here?”

“Yeah, Robyn!” Fiona says, bending in from the other side. “She’s a grown-up! She can eat her steak however she wants!”

And for a beat, a single beat, May is genuinely about to thank her for the assistance.

“That’s why I made sure to bring these!”

Unnecessarily twirling her fingers for sheer flair, Fiona pops a pair of wrapped chopsticks out of her semblance, waggling her eyebrows as she offers them up.

May groans from deep in her gut – and her soul – but can’t for the life of her scrub the fond, smitten smile off her friggin’ face.

So, alright, it’s a pretty nice evening, all-in-all. Quality banter on tap, no overly-dour subjects dredged up, but honestly? Aside from there being a little more spice to their regular teasing of one another, May can’t help but feel that for a date, for The Big Date To Maybe-Sorta Prove She’s Date-able, it still doesn’t feel that different from their default.

They’re all here, they’re relaxed, they’re unguarded – well, as unguarded as May can ever afford to be – they’re enduring another one of Robyn’s long-winded, emphatic spiels on What’s Really Wrong With Atlas These Days, which they each know by heart down to the last beat. You could cover up the luxurious dinner with value menu take-out from Bug Burger, the dresses with ripped jeans and stained hoodies, and the vibe would be… mostly the same.

Not like a date.

And apparently, May’s not the only one that thinks so. Across the table, Joanna meets her eyes and silently mouths, ‘Wanna dance?’ with a jut of her head towards the patches of mingling pairs out near the stage, lazily swaying to the piano backdrop.

And you know what? She kind of does.

So engrossed is she in Robyn’s rant, Fiona doesn’t catch on until May’s forced to physically lift her up and out of the way, just to shimmy out beneath.

“Hey, where’re you two… oh! Hey, I call next dibs!”

Joanna laughs, crooking an arm for May to hold onto, like a proper escort. “You can’t call dibs on a fine lady, Fi.”

Snorting, Fiona gestures broadly at their table, as well as the pair preparing to abscond. “Uh, you literally can, and it’s the foundation of our relationship! We call dibs on each other all the time!”

“Hah. Then I called it first. Don’t worry, I’m sure her dance card’s still got a few slots open.” Joanna seems to steal several chapters worth of pages from Robyn’s book then, looking down at May with smoldering eyes and a smirk, voice lowered into an alluring growl. “Am I right?”

And isn’t that an experience to have to contend with. Bereft of her Ability To Words, May silently, but rapidly nods her assent, and spends their walk to the dance floor trying to clear out that syrupy feeling in her throat.

Those couple of hours Joanna spent with eyes peeled, watching rundown videos for basic classical steps, were well spent. Even if the atmosphere is much more casual, nor requiring a real routine, it’s given her a nice frame of reference to work with. The moment they’re clear of the other couples, she sweeps May into a whirl across a clear patch of floor, dresses fluttering around their ankles. As they come to a halt, a strong, callused hand finds May’s waist, another still tangled with her own off to the side.

The pianist is keeping it mellow, and finding a slow groove is easy. The real challenge for May is looking up, rather than staring at their feet and second-guessing. All those afternoons as a child burned learning ballroom-style bullshit, and she’s still the one scared of stepping on her partner’s toes.

Well, not her partner– That is, her dance partner, not her team partner, or romantic partner, except yes-maybe-actually-romantic partner, and out of romantic partners plural? And…

And she looks up again, ensnared in the rare tranquility of Joanna’s smile. Less of that innate cockiness her teammates love to lord over her when they tease, no. Just a genuine contentment.

“What, can’t believe I’m not tripping over my feet?” she asks, and May shakes her head with a low, distant chuckle.

“Can’t believe any of this, really. Was pretty sure I’d die without a single date on file. Coast a few more years then bite it my first black ops mission as a Specialist, something to that effect. Instead… These three stubborn women I know up and decide to change that. Got it in their heads they’ve got feelings for me. Can you believe it?”

“We do. I do.” Joanna confirms, guiding them into the next turn. “You’re more of a catch than you think. Not because of your parents, or their money, or the cushy life y’coulda had. You decided not to double down on their bullshit, and keep doing what’s right for you, even if it means giving all that up.  Doin’ what’s right in general. Lotta people, given that choice, they’d pick the money and let it eat ‘em alive.”

They would. And it wouldn’t always be a black mark on their character. This world is hard, and unfair, and pit between fighting at frightening disadvantage and an easy road that always leads to failure, it’s always the latter that hurts the least in the moment. Some people’ve hurt enough; they can’t handle much more.

And in another world, another time, maybe May’d’ve gone that way. If she fell, weighed down as she was, and didn’t have three strangers cross her path, three sets of hands reach out to catch her.

“Joanna…” she whispers, their motions slowing as an opportunity begins to present itself. But then, May looks to either side, wary of their surroundings, of the other pairs spinning through the steps. She knows it shouldn’t matter if they stare; none of them know her, none of them really care, she has enough plausible deniability thanks to that rumor, but it’s still lighting up her nerves with alert.

Joanna seems to hesitate as well, spotting this. Reluctant to press her luck just yet, she lifts the mood back up and out.

“Oh, and you’ve got a tight ass, too.”

“JO!”

Breaking out in a laugh, Joanna brings May into a twirl, letting her go halfway. Before she knows it, her flailing arms are caught and brought low, a beaming Fiona picking her right up where they’d left off. Out of the corner of her eye, May can see Joanna falling into step with Robyn, the pair having joined the fray just in time for a swap.

“It’s weird, you know?” says Fiona, angling their arms to account for her height or lack thereof. “We only really started putting stuff together after you came out, but… it still feels like we’ve been waiting so, so long to do this.”

“Can’t’ve been that long. I was still acting like a shitty rich boy most of first year. Then marginally-less shitty rich boy ‘til recently.”

“Uh, no offense? You bigtime suck at being a guy, May.”

May’s stupid grin, the one she’d forgotten to keep track of, cracks a little wider. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should! It’s just– So much stuff made sense! Especially why we liked you so much more than any other boy in school. It was just… the whole vibe! And then you were all, ‘hello, May here,’ and likable turned into like-likable...”

Pff. It couldn’t’ve been that simple, could? To just... ‘bigtime suck’ so bad in the boy leagues that she was earning points on the ladies’ scoreboard even before she switched divisions. “Just like that, huh?”

“I mean, I can’t speak for those two, but… for me, back then, you were always kinda my ‘If-I-Had-To-Pick-A-Guy?’ I just didn’t think too hard about why until after you came out, and it all kinda… popped together just right.” Fiona gives a suitably sheepish laugh, squeezing their laced fingers. “And then it was for super-sure when we took you to buy clothes? It was something so small and silly, but it was the happiest I’d ever seen you…”

It was silly. It wasn’t much, and May still felt pretty scruffy in those clothes, but even the scare at the end of their outing that night couldn’t change the fact that it probably was, in fact, the happiest she’d been in years. Which is patently depressing if you really think about it, but May’s busy dancing with a living bundle of optimism, serving as sufficient distraction.

“Tonight’s shaping up to be a close second. Might even overtake it here before too long,” she mulls out loud, and carefully minds her backstep to keep from bumping into another couple.

Fiona’s ears do that happy upwards-wiggle, the one that May’s never sure is intentional or not. So adorable. “Wish we would’ve known from the start, though… we could’ve been doing this years ago.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“It’s okay,” Fiona winks, “You were worth it!”

Though lacking the size advantage, Fiona’s no less capable of the force required to send May spinning again, turned loose to fall right into the arms of one Robyn Hill and her sinful smile.

“Those two better not’ve stolen all the good lines already. I made it explicitly clear we’re splitting threesies on all the swoon-worthy sap.”

Cutting close by their shoulders, Joanna and Fiona pause for the former to interject, “The night’s still young! We saved you plenty!”

“Silence from the peanut gallery,” Robyn orders cheerfully, gliding May away from them both. “Seriously though. Waiting ‘til tonight was hard enough. I’ve got to make up for lost time.”

May’s reply is dry as the desert. “No surprise, you’re a relentless flirt. What else is new?”

“The trick is…” There’s a lull in the music, as the duo onstage change to an even slower tune, and Robyn takes full advantage of the pause to guide May’s hands to her lips, pressing them to the back of her palm. “...With the three of you, I actually mean it.”

That’s not even fair, come on! This is May’s first date, you can’t just break out heavy artillery like that and expect her to keep a handle on her heartrate!

Because Robyn means it. May’s reflexive responses might be warning her it’s a steaming load, but elsewhere, deep in those tiny, cramped recesses where her optimism’s gone to be a hermit, she can tell it’s true.

“Keep it up, Hill. I might actually believe you someday.” Pulling her hand back, May gets them back into the swing of their clumsy waltz, even if her heartbeat’s still set at more of a tango.

“I intend to, as long as you’re sticking around.”

“Don’t think I’ve got any call to be anywhere else. Not one I’m inclined to listen to, at any rate.”

“Good to know.” Something layered in Robyn’s voice betrays relief, of all things, prompting May to quirk a brow as she continues. “We’d always been a little worried, you know. That you still planned to go play soldier after graduation. Wouldn’t want to come schlep around with the three of us.”

After all this? Sure, she’s stayed in the Specialist preparatory course these last few years, but why wouldn’t she – the techniques will always be a boon no matter where she ends up, and pretending to have eyes on a shiny, highly-merited officer’s position keeps the parents off her back about her life choices for the time being.

“I literally stopped wanting to take the commission our second semester! What’s there to worry about?”

“Well…” There’s that peculiar unease again, so rare for Robyn to let slip through. “Even if you didn’t, you still might’ve wanted to dip out of Solitas once you got your license, get away from it all. Pick up and move to the ass end of Vacuo for all we know. Live in a cave, eat cactus fruit.”

The very thought pushes a low groan out of May, who shakes her head. “Okay, for one thing? I’d never be caught dead in Vacuo. Literally the only place on Remnant that sounds worse to live than the tundra. And for two? After I ditched the Ace Op aspirations, I always wanted to see if you three really did want to keep me around, in the long run. But I never knew when to bring it up, didn’t want to assume.”

Robyn’s eyes soften with a sympathetic understanding, a silent concern, a glint of hope, all layered in gorgeous shades of violet. May isn’t sure she’s ever stared into them this long, or this deeply before, afraid of her infatuation being caught out. But now that she’s allowed she dares, and Brothers, is she beautiful.

The space between them shortens, Robyn’s voice turned down to a tender murmur.

“You’ve always got a place here. Even if you don’t want to keep this up, this dating thing, after tonight...”

She does. She does, damn it.

“...You’ll always be our fourth, May. We’ll be glad to have you, however you’ll let us.”

Again, the soft sentiment breaks through all the barriers May’s mind has built up over the years, planting its seeds. They'll have her. They really will; even knowing everything they do about her, her ugly secrets, her jagged edges, rough patches, and broken bits that’ll never work right, they'll have her and keep her. She'll have a home in three hearts when her own can't work up the strength to endure. They mean it.

So few ever have this chance. Almost none like her ever do, ever could. Not without bending or breaking or settling for less, always less. She’d be a fool to pass this up.

And she’d much rather be a fool in love.

Words have escaped her again; how is she supposed to work up a response to an admission like that? Anything past an awed, whispered “Robyn…” is too complicated for her stupid, fuzzy brain to process.

Shit, this is it, isn’t it? Isn’t this what those special moments are supposed to be like?

They’re so close now. Maybe an inch of open air separates their noses from nuzzling into one another. And neither is backing down, or backing away.

So how do I get her to… Because I want her to be the one to do it, so should I just drift closer and close my eyes and hope? But people are looking, they’re noticing! Should I just go for it, or...

She doesn’t go for it.

She’s choking an inch from the goal line, too overly burdened with factors that shouldn’t matter, and she knows Robyn can tell, because Robyn can always tell. How May’s eyes keep flitting down to her lips, then frantically over to the crowds around them, rather than straight back up again.

“Hey,” Robyn interrupts her thoughts, softly, dropping May’s hand and resting one on her shoulder instead. “How about we go and get some air?”

Damn it. Yes. No. The moment’s shot, but the night doesn’t have to be. “Yeah, that’s… Yeah. Okay.” A little fresh air, a little privacy, maybe that’ll do the trick, and she can somehow seal the deal.

Robyn catches the others’ attention and thumbs at the door, then walks her fingers up an invisible flight of stairs. They seem to get the gist, falling into formation behind them once Fiona’s scampered over to grab their things from the table.

“Ahh, this takes me back.”

Under the wispy cloak of May’s semblance, the four huntresses have clustered themselves around the restaurant’s roof access door, all the while Fiona pokes and prods little metal bits and bobs into the handle.

“Takes you back to what, exactly?” May asks of Robyn, who reaches in to rub Fiona’s shoulders while she works.

“Our first date, me and Fi here. She was so excited to show me this biiiiig, romantic, hydroponic rooftop garden near her old apartment block, ‘cept the crotchety landlord decided to lock it down. So, with a flick of the wrist and a little finesse…” She chuckles, settling her chin on top of Fiona’s curls. “Forget the flowers, the petty crime’s what really made me swoon.” 

May double-checks that the hall behind them is still empty before she asks, “And how exactly did you learn how to pick locks, anyway?”

“Wouldn’t YOU like to know?” Fiona wiggles her eyebrows mysteriously.

Flat as can be, Robyn immediately pops that balloon. “Her cousin’s a locksmith.”

“Ugh, hey, I was trying to be cool! ...Oh! It’s open!”

Broadly contrasting the building’s opulent interior and manicured facade, the roof of The Felicity Rock Hotel is… pretty much just another cheap, ugly, Mantle roof, packed with vents and air cycling units, an old-fashioned CCT antenna nobody’s gotten around to taking down. A speckling of crushed cans and burnt-out cigarette butts from equally burnt-out workers spending their short-lived breaks milling about up here.

May drops her semblance as soon as the door’s shut, and she’s scouted the place for cameras. The most those indoors’ll see is a finnicky door blown open by a stray gust, then falling shut again. Nothing to raise any hackles over.

Seeming to have the same idea, the group drifts towards the railed edges of the roof, all lining up in a row with arms and elbows propped on the cold metal.

No one else says anything, so May swallows her guilt and rolls out a pre-emptive apology. “Look, if I seemed… nervous in there, or like I wanted to stop, I’m sorry – it wasn’t because of you three. It’s just me, my whole…”

Her whole ‘whatever’ can’t exactly be conveyed through her vague gesticulations towards herself, but she still pulls away from the edge to try.

“My thing about the way people look at me. Not that it’s bad being seen with you! Just being seen at all, and like this, and now? Even knowing that all of you see me romantically, I’m just… not used to it yet.”

She leaves them a clearing to interrupt if they see fit, but it seems they’re set on hearing her out, no matter how rambling her explanation, so she might as well keep talking aimlessly until she runs out of breath.

“And yeah, taking it slow might help, but I don’t want to stop, either! It’s a lot to handle, but… I still want this! It’s almost scary how much I want right now, and the three of you are probably the only people on Remnant I feel safe with helping me figure it all out. Because, okay, confession time? I crushed on you nerds years ago; back when I thought I’d never have a chance because you were all into girls, and I was… y’know. And now I’m somehow on a date with all three of you at once, and I have no idea what I’m doing...”

May pauses, again, but… They’re still not stopping her? Cripes, this must be the most words she’s strung together at once in months. Someone should’ve told her to shut her face ages ago.

“So you might have to take the lead a lot, or give me a nudge, or something to keep things moving, but– But I mean it! I don’t know much about what it feels like to be loved, but whatever this is, I want it! Need it, even! Because no matter what happens, I already know that I–”

VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN. VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNN.

“...I can’t believe this shit.”

Blood runs cold as hearts quicken, any other sound drowned out by the all-too-familiar blare of Mantle’s civil defense sirens signaling a Grimm Breach, the screech of a collapsing strut in the outer wall, tumbling debris.

The four huntresses-in-training rush back to leaning over the railing, trying for a better vantage in case there’s anything to spot.

“C’mon,” mutters Fiona, tiny knuckles turning white. “Please, not this sector, please not this sector…”

The streetlights at ground level shunt to emergency orange. A rowdy Sabyr thumps down the avenue, menacing pedestrians back into their homes and offices. Everyone groans.

Except for May, that is, who only leans precariously further over the railing’s edge, staring down the side of the structure at the ground, before pulling back and cursing with a loud and entirely justified “Gods damn it!” as she paces away.

Team leader to the rescue, Robyn tries to head her off with a sad, sympathetic smile, a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m really sorry, May. I know we all were looking forward to this, and it already meant so much you gave us a shot, maybe we can try again next–“

“Huh? ...No, not THAT!” May recoils, startled that her partner’s mind had gone there, of all places. “I mean, how are we supposed to get down there? This building, it’s too sleek, no pipes, no handholds – and the stairs’re shot, since the civvies’re probably panicking, place’ll be a clusterfuck...”

There’s a silence save for the sirens, as the other three collectively stare at her, then each other, with knowing smiles.

Which kind of wigs May out, to be honest. Shouldn’t they be getting a move on? “...What?”

What ‘what’ is, as she’ll only remember after the fact, is how her heart had already made up its mind that she needed to do something to help those imperiled Mantlers down below, even before her brain bothered to register the lack of weaponry, landing strategy, suitable attire, or the simple fact that she is not the team leader and the choice whether or not to leap off a sixteen-story building and into the maw of danger is probably her prerogative. Which probably made them, like, proud of her or some other sappy shit.

“Yep. This one’s a keeper,” Robyn preens, then spins on her heel to survey the surrounding buildings. “The lady’s right, though. Downstairs’ll be a clog. No pipes, no scaffolding. Which means… we’ll just have to borrow the neighbor’s.”

Joanna gives her captain a long-suffering look. “Oh, that neighbor? That neighbor a good forty, fifty foot shot away?” Specifically, that neighbor across the street, an old beige brick high-rise packed with startups and small law firms. As a feature of its age, it comes equipped with a good deal of piping, fire escapes, and a fortuitously abandoned window washer’s scaffold.

“I don’t imagine they’ll mind too much. Lambchop, if you would?”

“On it!” is the reply, Fiona’s hand already shimmering with her semblance and dumping out a portion of its contents: their gym duffels, a first-aid kit, shoes blessed shoes May has missed real shoes so much these last couple of hours give them here now-now-now, and the team’s battered old dust storage crate. “Aura check?”

Robyn’s removed her scroll from her clutch to ditch it for her gym bag. “Green across the board. Gonna need some Grav-dust for the height no matter how we handle it, how are we looking?”

Resigned to this chicanery and the unlikelihood of ever getting the dessert she ordered, Joanna kicks open the crate and gives it a rifling-through. “I don’t see any, not that we haven’t already loaded into bolts. We’re packed on those, but… didn’t we just restock?”

May slows up, only one sneaker slid on. “Um,” she says at length, while beginning to feel all kinds of stupid, actually, and maybe she shouldn’t have opened her mouth. “I might have, uh. Used the rest. For bullets. TowinabetwithWinter.”

She can see the usual stormfront of distaste roll its way over her team’s faces, but really, is now the time for nitpicking her only other social outlet? Why be jealous, she’s on a date with them! Literally, right now! Albeit, a disaster of a date based on the present state of emergency, but it should still count!

“Weeeell,” Fiona gloats, summoning and passing out those confusing bow-staffs the Mantlers’ve been working on – even the spare they cooked up for Robyn, apparently not feeling up to putting her newest gauntlet prototype to the test while hurtling to the ground at terminal velocity. “We might not have any spare crystal for your pistol, but we’ve still got a whole bunch of bolts! So, you can either hold on tight to one of us...”

“Context clues tell me I won’t like where this is headed.”

“OR!” One more aura-shimmer, and another identical staff pops from her palm, which she emphatically pushes into May’s chest. “You get with the program already!”

Grumbling, May nudges the faunus away to grope for the latch, expanding the thing to its full height and resting a foot on the lower grip. “You made a fourth one? Since when? You don’t break them that often, how many extras do you even need?”

“Why do you think we settled on ‘em?” Joanna offers from over by the crate. “They’re cheap to build!”

“NOT what I want to hear when it’s supposed to be ferrying me across a street ten stories up!”

“I thought you said sixteen.”

May hurls back an anxious little hiss of frustration, but truthfully, this isn’t the worst case scenario. She’s had a decent bit of practice with the thing, usually when either Joanna or Fiona wanted a stave-sparring partner to beat around for a while, much to the chagrin of her poor, poor shins.

Come to think of it, with how frequently she’s switched weapons over the years – both stock arms and expensive, overblown test models alike never truly fitting her just right – this flimsy hodge-podge of the weapons the other three’d lugged up with them on initiation day is probably the weapon with which she’s has the most hours of cumulative experience.

She still thinks the design could use a few adjustments, maybe some extra blades fitted on the limbs of the crossbow segments to better serve as a glaive, streamline the decoupling process, maybe work on an automatic receiver for the bolt-loading. Aluminum core with a polycarbonate coating might work for now, though it might be time to workshop other materials. But… but honestly, at that point, if she’s really gonna waste any more time poring over the schematics and helping them fine-tune it, she might as well just start using the damn thing on a day-to-day basis herself!

...Huh.

But, like. But like maybe she sorta kinda should, though?

None of her other options’ve ever stuck with her, but this one’s always been there, ripe and ready whenever she’s needed it. Making one’s own weapon is… Weaponsmithing class preaches that it’s supposed to be all philosophically meaningful, all that pretty poetic crap about the soul of the huntress, the extension of the self, but... as long as she pours a bit of that spiffy new self she’s been discovering into perfecting that weapon, how is it any less tied to her own identity, just because it’s shared with her team? Her heart already is.

May’s feeling like an idiot more and more by the minute, with how many long-stalled realizations are finally slotting into place tonight, but she’s not currently at liberty to throw some moody music on her scroll, pop in her earbuds, and stare vacantly into the top of her bunk while she decompresses them all.

Joining in miserable harmony with the sirens, there’s a cacophonous crash from down below; the panicked squealing of a car alarm dying out under the bellows of a full-grown Polar Ursa.

“Right. Screw it,” May spits. “Grimm’ve ruined the first real date of my life, and I’d very much like to kill something. Load me up.”

Combat boots and sparkly dresses. Shiny jewelry and ammo bags. Perfectly-painted nails on fingers firmly gripped around polearm hafts. Sharp eyeliner, sharper spearheads. They probably look ridiculous, like action movie starlets posing on the red carpet with mock weapons from the film, rather than real-deal huntresses ready for the field. And there’s something so stupidly appropriate about it. No amount of fancy dinner-date dressup can ever overpower who they are, deep down.

Technically, the terms of a Huntsman Academy student’s provisional license stipulate that trainees are only cleared to engage Grimm and aura-confirmed human hostiles in cases of self-defense, or in the defense of civilians within the immediate area.

Robyn Hill, for one, seems to find no problem with their ‘immediate area’ including the near-on two hundred feet of open air below as she breaks into a running sprint for the railing, spinning her staff low and firing a Grav-bolt at her feet to launch her, laughing wildly, towards the opposite building.

“Let’s get at ‘em, girls!”

Their leader hasn’t even caught herself on the first handhold when Fiona and Joanna both pick their targets and angle for their jumps. Fearlessly, they follow Robyn’s arc and blast themselves across the street, the former shouting as she flies,“Last one down pays for the daaaaaaaate…!”

“I was already paying for the– Hey!”

Dorks. Idiots. Incorrigible. They mean the world to her.

May sucks in a cloudy lungful of sooty Mantle air to steady herself. One beat, two beats, and she runs. Silver-sequin dress streaking behind, ugly clashed sneakers pounding the concrete, she hops to the rail, holds down her staff’s trigger, and kicks the lower grip. Before gravity can even make its grab for her, the concussive Grav-bolt blast sends her rocketing weightless across the skyline, leaping last into the fray.

As the first drops of adrenaline flood into her veins, all motion seems to slow midflight.

Robyn, grinning like a fox, twirling herself down an air conditioning pipe like a heavily-armed pole-dancer. Fi and Jo, hooking their staves on scaffolds and ledges, swinging down floor after floor.

All of sleepless Mantle’s sparkling lights stretching out far and wide, those just below tinged a warm, wavering sunset orange, inviting in spite of all its danger. The moonlit tundra beyond.

And May, feeling so strangely serene as she flies the gap, her heart fluttering, free as a bluebird broken out of her cage.

There’s no turning back.

Chapter Text

It’s well past standard curfew by the time a team of tired huntresses-to-be slog back into their assigned dormitory; first three, then four as the door seals shut behind them and the cloak is dropped.

It’s been a hell of a night. Not quite all roses and romantic overtones, once dinner and dancing had been been overshadowed by the dire struggle against the forces of darkness.

Once they’d hit the ground running, Robyn led the team to cautiously but courageously clear out the Grimm surging onto the thoroughfare, then steadily pushed outward in the direction of the breach. While the paltry sum of patrol cops and military drones deployed focused mainly on the beasts destroying storefronts and state property, the four of them made civilian safety the priority, damming the tide until the shivering, aura-less pedestrians could flee to a designated shelter.

May remained at the rear of the pack, at first, citing her comparative inexperience with the crossbow-staff. Still, as the night grew long and the fight raged on, more and more often did she find herself meeting the smiling face of a teammate over the corpse of a bisected Grimm, having fallen so fluidly into combination attacks at every available opportunity.  The sentimentality of each moment was only somewhat tarnished by the acrid vapor of a disintegrating monster between them.

Pushing forward against the tide was almost easier than the defense of the breach itself, where added frustration over the frozen-molasses response times of the actual licensed military huntsmen made the minutes crawl by. For a quartet of self-deputized emergency responders, they do pretty well for themselves, a paltry few of the mid-sized Grimm ever making it past their formation and forcing their partner pairs to split and give chase.

After the battle, they’d called the drone chauffeur to bring the limo back around, taking advantage of their last hour of active rental service to evacuate wounded civvies to the shelters and hospitals. Somewhere along the way, May’d lost her shawl to use as someone’s tourniquet, and the minibar pillaged of its highest-proof alcohol for a stand-in disinfectant.

Suffice to say, the four were already close to dead on their feet when they’d arrived back on campus,  their permanent records spared any curfew violations by the caveats in place for Grimm alerts disrupting transit. Monday’s already looking to be a gossip storm given the odd looks the visible three had earned climbing back out of the limousine and shambling for the dormitory block, their gala-grade evening wear scuffed, torn, and rumpled with battle damage.

It’s a mercy May’d even had the luxury of invisibility; her aura levels have been deep in the red for the last hour or so, barely any fuel in the tank. Not because she’d taken that many hits – actually, she’d swear she’s getting better at evasive maneuvering with that staff – but on account of the precarious increase in cameras peeking from windows, drones, and News airships zooming around the night’s carnage as the violence petered out. From that point on, she could count the number of minutes she’d spent uncloaked on one hand, and finally being free to drop it has her collapsing against the bunk wall with a groan of relief.

If one were to have warned her the end of their date night would see her sweaty and physically exhausted, this, uh. This wouldn’t’ve been how she’d’ve expected it to happen, to put it delicately.

Robyn blindly gropes at the wall for the control panel to flip on the lights, causing immediate cringing and cursing as they’re blasted with fluorescence until they’re set down to dim.

“So. That was… something.” Poignant words from their leader.

Fiona kicks her legs up behind her, yanking off her boots and popping them into her pocket dimension. They were a better fit for battle than her heels, but she’s still eager to be rid of them. “We should… hah. We should be able to submit that for extra credit. That was a workout!”

"And on a full stomach. If I wasn't still bloated full of fancy foreign foods I still can't pronounce, I'd be feeling frisky." Joanna smirks, ruffling at May’s hair, the latter too tired to bat the hand away. “One of you still owes me a Tiramisu, by the way.”

“Yeah, we didn’t get our dessert, did we?” The sheep faunus gasps then, hiding a smile behind her hand. “Oh gods, we totally dined and dashed! There’s more of that petty crime you were waiting for, Robyn!”

The fact that they all know full well their meal would automatically be charged to the same pre-paid card as the reservation needn’t be raised, lest that kill the buzz of mischief.

“True enough! Adds a nice romantic flair to the evening, give or take a few hours hacking monsters apart.” Robyn begins to push up off the wall, to the chagrin of the faunus still slumped into her side. “Alright – showers, then we hit the hay?”

“Actually...” That dizzying twist of ‘I Really Shouldn’t Have Said Anything’ wrings May’s gut, but she’s still trusting in that poor gut to get her what she wants. Because even if the night was mostly a wreck, the others seem happy with it, right? Enough to say it was a success overall, to call it good? Call her good?

“I mean, you three’d be the experts here, but, uh… Isn’t there something else that’s supposed to happen at the end of a date? Usually before you go home, I guess, but we’re already home, so–”

The other three stop and turn, eyeing May with confusion until they realize. At that point, their clump moves to surround May. As the atmosphere shifts into that of a tense Vacuan standoff, Robyn’s eyes flit to her other girlfriends.

“Well, we can’t all kiss her at once.”

Joanna cranks up the sarcasm, since May’s not at liberty to do so. “Why, what ever happened to equal shares for all? Are you trying to hoard the people’s precious May resources for yourself? Tyrant.”

“Yeah,” Fiona agrees, “like, we both kissed Joanna at the same time!”

“Yes, because Joanna had two cheeks to kiss. So unless we’re about to get very creative and very liberal with what counts as a viable ‘cheek,’ that’s not going to work this time around.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake–!” May yanks Robyn’s stupid, enchanting face down and mashes their lips together to shut her up, because she can already see the crass joke about being an ‘ass-kisser' a mile away, and she’d honestly like to salvage even the slightest fragment of romance from this interaction.

It’s neither how she expected, nor wanted her first kiss to play out, of course, but fuck, at this point she’s glad she’s getting one at all, and when Robyn starts to kiss her back? When she hears a pleased chuckle and Robyn’s hands find purchase on her hips? There’s that feeling she wanted – that feeling of genuinely being wanted, silently spoken through the soft slide of Robyn’s lips against hers.

She feels like she’s falling inwards, caught in Robyn’s overwhelming presence, even as she’s standing still. Could be May’d rushed in too aggressively for someone with zero smooching experience to fall back on, but Robyn doesn’t seem to mind, correcting their angle and keeping it soft, no mashing of noses or clashing of teeth. May’s starting to lose track of exactly how long they’ve been going, the straight shot of affection sizzling between them going straight to May’s brain with searing strength.

There’s a quick flick of tongue along her lower lip as Robyn disengages and gives May a wink, which– Which isn’t helping her recover her cognitive faculties from the grip of her own gayness, gods damn it. And Robyn, pleased with her work, knows it.

“Fah… Ooh. Yep, she’s my new favorite. You two’ve gotta kiss me like that if you want to climb back up the leaderboards.”

“Fuck off, Boss.” Fondly shoving their smartass captain out of the way, Joanna swoops in with a kiss like a thunderclap, and whatever witty retort followed is drowned out entirely in May’s ears. The others briefly fizzle into background noise, Joanna wholly encompassing her senses now. It’s hotter this time – literally, given Jo’s always run warmer than the rest of them – and even slower, but making up for it in the nigh-airtight seal formed from how firmly she locks their lips. And it holds, and holds… Joanna’s good at holding people, so that tracks.

Needless to say, it leaves May breathless, audibly panting for air as they part, eyes already a bit glazed over. One moment Joanna’s softly chucking her under the chin, and one slow blink later, she’s been replaced with a short, chipper sheep faunus, who gives her a silly little wave once her eyes open, and proceeds to try and suck her face off.

Whether Fiona’s attempting to make sure the best was saved for last, or simply trying to make up for being forced to wait her turn, May can’t complain about the enthusiasm. Her hands land on Fiona’s shoulders to start with, but the next thing she knows, a smaller set is gripping her wrists, and guiding them carefully upwards. Over neck, over cheeks, they finally come to rest on a fuzzy, wiggling set of ovine ears, the looped earrings cool against May’s palms. An implicit statement of permission to touch.

Oh. Faunus don’t just hand trait-touching privileges out like candy. This is a for-real-real relationship, isn’t it?

The moment May starts to rub her thumbs along the inside of the cartilage, Fiona hums happily into her mouth, and she can’t help but return the sentiment.

As her bitchy lungs once again decide to demand some oxygen, she draws back to see Robyn and Joanna already shed of their jewelry and making for the bathroom together, heading to hog the showers first. Robyn smiles their way when they look.

“You kids make smart decisions, now! Don’t forget to use protection!”

She clicks her tongue and fires a finger gun to sign off, then disappears into the other room. Fiona snickers brightly at the cheap joke, but as the bathroom door slams and she turns back to May, Fi promptly finds the vague anxiety May’s struggling to bury like evidence from a crime scene.

The anxiety about… that. Sex. Protection. Sex involving protection. The circumstances of her own situation and why they might conventionally need that protection. All that shit she’s not ready to talk about.

Naturally, Fiona is a complete sweetheart deluxe, and pulls May’s hands down from her ears to hold them tight between their chests. “Oh, she was just kidding! We’re not gonna– I mean, not tonight, at least? Or… or ever, if you don’t want, but if you DO want, then that’ll be whenever you do, and however you want it, and… stuff! But tonight, we’re all too tired even if you did wanna, so don’t worry about it!”

The bluster eases May’s nerves some, and she allows herself some honesty, considering she can’t rightfully remove the worry in its entirety. “It’s fine, and I’m not against doing that, someday. Maybe. I just didn’t know whether you all’d expect that on a first date or not, and…” She shrugs.

“Okay! And hey, I promise, we can drop it for tonight, but… I’ll just say, we’re all totally down, if you do want to. But there’s a lotta new stuff we can do now, and it doesn’t just have to be that! You can always ask!”

That’s true. A lot of walls have come down tonight – and not just the slab of wall down in Mantle that made them waste most of their evening stopping monsters wreaking mayhem. Simple acts of intimacy that seemed so distant, now in reach, provided May’s brave enough to reach for them.

“Could we…” Now, there is a safe way, and a very, very stupid way to phrase this. “Okay, we already aren’t gonna do anything… frisky, but could we maybe still sleep tog–“

That’s! Literally! The stupid way!

“...So, you know how you guys’d sometimes break out the futon and make a little slumber party nest on the floor, and sleep there together?” May’s hands fall out of Fiona’s to engage in another nervous habit, one hand reflexively rubbing at her opposite arm. “You think we could maybe do that, tonight? But… I’m in there, this time?

Fiona’s face lights up like Winter Solstice came early this year.

Robyn and Joanna finish their showers to find Fiona already rolling out the futon, decking it out with some of the fresh bedding stowed in her semblance. Compared to the aborted pillow party earlier in the week, the night of their confession, May’s no longer walled herself off from enjoying it for fear of being hurt.

Fiona hops in the shower next, leaving the remainder to sort out the pillows in accordance with personal plushness preference, May feeling a bit silly as the last one still decked out in fancy dress. Once she’s gone and taken her own turn, popping out of the showers in her bland, but comfortable Academy-issue pajamas, the others have finished setting up the crash pad, leaving a very blatant vacancy right in the middle.

“Get in here already,” Robyn calls, waving her over. “I’m bushed, and we’re one girlfriend short of a proper cuddle puddle.”

Girlfriend. Damn. She’s a girlfriend, now. That’s a thing she is. And also has? Will the wonders ever cease?

“So, everyone’s still on board with that after tonight?” May keeps on clarifying as she flops into the middle of the pile, turning to scope out the others’ mood on the matter. “Being girlfriends? With me?”

The others reply in unison with some variety of ‘Duh,’ all reaching to shove or tousle or prod May for asking such stupid questions. They’d better get used to it; she’ll probably be asking them every day and night for the next six months, just to be absolutely sure they mean it, no takebacks.

“Sorry, Princess, but until you decide you wanna pull the plug, you’re stuck with us,” Robyn concludes, rolling against May’s back to be the big spoon. “Sheesh. At this rate of exponential growth, we’re gonna hit critical girlfriend mass by graduation. We’ve run out of team members, so we’ll have to start poaching.”

The straightforward tone is called out for the snark it is once Fiona’s reached across May to pinch Robyn’s side. “Don’t even, it’s not like there’s anybody else out there who fits like we do.”

“Dunno. Everyone thinks May ‘n Winter are a thing; sure we shouldn’t bring her onboard for optics?” Joanna can’t even finish her thought with a straight face, joining the others in their various groans of comically exaggerated dread and disdain.

“Fuck off,” drones May. “She’d be the death of us all, if Jacques didn’t get to us first.”

“I’d rather sleep in a pit full of Centinels than with a Schnee,” is Robyn’s colorful retort.

And lastly, a “You’re about to lose your snuggle privileges” from Fiona, who begins crawling over Joanna’s stomach before a big strong arm pins her there in a hug.

“Ch’yeah, alright. We’re all full up for now, I think.” Joanna pecks her lips to the crown of Fiona’s head, and rolls inward to have the faunus nestled up against May in the middle of the futon. “No sense giving anyone nightmares,” she yawns.

“Nothing a goodnight kiss won’t fix.” Fiona cants her head back to return the favor against Jo’s neck, then keeps the momentum rolling by passing it on to May.

Attaining kiss equity takes a minute, but it gives them all an excuse to cling even closer around their newest addition, May having no urge whatsoever to complain about more kisses, more positive attention, more of everything. And as they finish balancing things out, Robyn and Joanna sharing a smooch over hers’ and Fiona’s heads, it strikes her:

This is the first time they’ve well and truly even cuddled.

Because even on their various long, overnight field survival tests, where it was assumed a team would share the same tent, May’d made a point to push her sleeping bag as far into the corner as possible, to give the others their space. Or better yet, boldly proclaiming she’d take first watch and wake the others later, only to simply never wake them, tanking the whole night just to avoid it. Just so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable by having her in their sphere.

But now, the tables have turned. Now, she’s allowed. Encouraged, even.

She doesn’t think her parents ever held her like this. Not even her own mother, when May was a baby fresh out of the womb. “A strong young man need not be coddled,” they’d say of the child, still half-coated in blood and amniotic fluid, before foisting her upon an incubator and a diet of bottled formula. Hands on shoulders during portrait posings or punitive slaps often the extent of their willingness to touch.

Really, these three had better know what they’re in for, taking a touch-starved fixer-upper like her.

Her eyelids are getting weighty, but before they close completely, she can see Joanna and Fiona both trying to read her mind through her momentary frown, and Robyn’s tighter hug means she detected the tightness in May’s shoulders. There’ll be plenty of time to brood about all the love she was denied when she’s not busy soaking up the love pouring in from all around her. And it is love, no use in arbitrarily stalling before she dares to say as much. So, moving to assuage her girlfriends’ (!!!) worries, she takes the plunge.

“Goodnight, you three. I… I love you.”

Joanna and Fiona’s expressions relax, as does Robyn’s arm, and hearing three sleepy voices each offering a “Love you, May” in return is enough to send her heart to the broken moon and back.

This is where she belongs. No longer kept apart by a vast canyon of differences. No longer the soldier and the freelancers, the Mantlers and the Atlesian heir, the girls and the guy, the partners and the odd one out.

No longer three and one. Just four very happy huntresses.

Which makes for one very happy May Marigold.