8

"Yang… please talk to me." Ruby pleaded with her sister. For the last fifteen minutes Yang just laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling. "It was just a spar, Yang…" Another attempt and only silence her answer. Ruby then suddenly ran out of the room. Within a few seconds she was back with a jar of cookies and was offering it to Yang. "Take a cookie, it always helped me!" Still nothing.

"Yang… You are still my favorite big sis! Nothing changed! We just need to figure out what went wrong!" She wouldn't give up. Not now, not ever, not on anybody. Especially not on her sister.

At a reminder of the battle Yang frowned and turned her head away from Ruby. "Nothing went wrong, I just wasn't good enough…" she spoke quietly.

"Nope!" but Ruby still heard her. "I don't know what happened and neither do you, so it's not your fault and we will figure it out! Or do you intend to stay in bed for the rest of your life?" Finally! She at last managed to get a word out of Yang.

"And what, you want me to be your lab rat or something?"

"Well… you can start by telling what you remember. I saw your aura pretty much explode and you blacked out afterwards, really anything, Yang."

Yang closed her eyes and tried to remember the last moments of the fight. "I was cold, just like, suddenly I was almost freezing. And I was really tired. More than I ever was before." It happened too fast, too sudden of a change for her to even understand properly. "Probably ran out of aura…"

"Hmm… that shouldn't have happened. You have more than I do and we were going evenly." Ruby spoke more to herself than to Yang as she scratched notes for later review.

"Rubes, don't think too much about it. I will get over it. But you are right about staying too much in bed. I need a shower." Yang started getting up from bed but stopped as soon as she removed the blanket. "Ruby… why am I naked?" She asked incredulously.

"It's not like I know where your clothes are, Yang." Ruby answered absolutely unperturbed. Too focused on solving the mystery.

"I meant how I got naked."

"Oh… you already were naked when I brought you back, you probably burned them." Ruby answered without any care but then remembered the great tragedy. "You destroyed Ember Celica! How could you!? After all your time together you go and break it!"

Yang needed some time to process the new information. She knew that her semblance produced a lot of heat but her clothes were supposed to be protected by her aura. Her aura which broke when she was standing over a puddle of molten rock. She looked to her feet and was pleasantly surprised when instead of two burned off stumps both her feet were still there.

"Oh no, will you forgive my transgressions against the weapon rights if I let you make the new ones?" Yang tried to calm Ruby down, there were more important things to deal with right now. "What happened to my hands?" She raised both of her bandaged fists in front of her face.

"I'm not sure, there were some bad burns, they should heal but you need to keep the bandages for at least a few days. It shouldn't scar, so that's a plus!" Ruby fumbled with the explanation. "As to how… Ember Celica probably melted… yeah."

Yang looked at her hands some more and then slowly nodded. "I think I'll head to the shower"

"Will you need any help?" Ruby quickly added.

"I'm tired, not helpless." Yang rolled her eyes, grabbed a towel, new clothes and left the room.

-BBW-

So new clothes and new weapons, damn, my poor allowance… Yang contemplated in the shower. Shit… had to let Rubes help me with the hair. Trying to wash her hair properly with both hands badly burnt and very sensitive was a very painful experience. She barely managed to get through it, rinsed off and stepped out. Need to check if there are any nice clothes on sale. Where did I leave my scro- Her thoughts came to a complete stop when she realized that her scroll, an item that contained a significant amount of her necessary information, was now probably a piece of burnt plastic and molten glass. And here goes my allowance for the next month as well… fantastic. She took quite some time to dry herself, usually she would just flare up her semblance but she was just too tired to do so. And she didn't feel like doing it so soon after burning way too many of her own possessions.

She went towards the kitchen, Tai wasn't home yet and Ruby had a tendency to forget to eat even on a good day. Despite all the annoyance that was cooking with bandaged up fingers she made two decant breakfasts and went to Ruby's room. When she entered, she saw Ruby sitting on the floor, her notes scattered around her and her scroll projecting two graphs on the wall.

"What's that?" Yang asked as she sat down next to her sister, pushed some of her notes away and put the plates down.

"Our aura levels during the fight, maybe there is something there." Ruby replied absentmindedly. Then she noticed the food and gave Yang a beaming smile.

"Right… wait, how did you get my aura readings? I thought my scroll got destroyed." Yang asked, slightly hopeful that maybe Ruby somehow managed to save it.

"Don't you remember that app dad had us install? We were listed as teammates so everything was synchronised."

"You mean only hunting stuff or like really everything?" Please, please, say yes!

Ruby scratched the back of her head, unsure of the specifics. "Gimme a second, there is a recovery function but I don't know what exactly it does." She turned off the projection and started fumbling with her scroll. "Okay, so, all of the IDs, banking, medical and combat data, contacts and locations."

Yes! Yang let out a sign of relief. At least she wouldn't need to spend an unreasonable amount of time setting everything up again. In the meantime Ruby restarted the projection and continued her research. The graphs were strange to say the least. Red one, Yang guessed it was Ruby's aura, was steadily going down during the fight, with a few small drops, which were probably their exchanges and was slightly above the half near the end. Yellow one, most likely hers, was ridiculous. While also having the small drops like Ruby's it kept jumping down and up. Yang knew she could channel more aura into her semblance to raise the enhancement factor, but it never came back in a jump. She couldn't simply take the blow and then somehow circulate it into an aura boost, could she? And of course at the end there was a sudden drop to a complete zero. Before that she actually had more aura than Ruby.

"Hmm… so it's not aura related." Ruby murmured and scratched something out of her notes.

"What gives?" Asked Yang. Theory was never her thing. She could memorize it for sure but it was just too boring for the most part.

"Well, you have more aura than I do, so if this was an issue of aura consumption then I would be one to lose. I honestly don't know why your aura levels kept jumping like that but there isn't anything like a harmful semblance. They are extensions of ourselves so they shouldn't be hurting us…" she looked at Yang worriedly "Yang… are you having troubles or-"

"I'm not suicidal!" Yang shouted at the accusation.

"Sorry, sorry… okay, did you see anything weird during the fight? Like why was I fine but you weren't?" Ruby tried to change the subject as fast as possible.

Yang huffed but decided to let it go. "Not really, the entire thing was weird but it was like only petals, your eyes started to glow slightly at the end but mine did all the time so I don't know."

"My eyes glowed?"

"Yeah? Like small wisps of white light coming out. You didn't know?"

"No. Petals and maybe some sparks. My eyes never glowed." Ruby jumped up from the floor and rushed to her computer, her notes flying all over the room. She quickly opened the search engine and typed in 'glowing eyes'.

"So?" Yang tried after she finished her breakfast.

"Nothing!" Ruby slammed her head on against the table. "All of it are either faunus or semblances that have to do with eyesight."

"...did you try looking for something like hearsay or some stories?"

"Why would I? I need something factual, not something vague and unrealistic!"

"Move over." Yang got up and when Ruby let her to the computer she started looking on her own. After some time she had two promising results. One was a very old article from Mantle about a woman with glowing eyes summoning a blizzard to destroy a horde of grimm and the other one was The Legend of Silver-eyed Warriors. A less known fairy tale about a bloodline of heroes who were supposed to save Remnant from grimm. "Rubes, did anything weird happen with grimm when you went all out? I think your eyes only started to glow after the fourth line."

Ruby would normally have a hard time recalling something like that. She spent a lot of time fighting grimm to remember every battle but she only went this far once as an exercise to see how far she could go. "I only did so one time and… I don't know if it counts as being weird but they seemed to freeze up a little? Like they were actually wary of getting closer? Usually no matter what I do they just attack. Actually, they would get even more aggressive the more I attacked."

That lined up with Yang's experience as well. For some reason, when she would start reciting her aria, the grimm would start charging recklessly. Grimm were aggressive by nature but it felt more like her very existence was a personal insult to every single one of them. But freezing up was new. She opened the fairy tale in full and started skimming through the text. Grimm fear the light. "Congratulations sis, you actually have superpowers." Yang said in a deadpan but secretly wondering what exactly it meant or even if she was right.

"What? You are just going to believe some fairy tale?" Ruby asked incredulously.

Yang just shrugged. "Well, I did learn about this whole chanting stuff by reading folklore from Vacuo."

"Butbut… that makes no sen-"

"Yang Xiao Long! Ruby Rose! Get out of the house right now!" Tai yelled from the outside. While Yang wondered what got him riled up, Ruby was slowly turning pale.

-BBW-

He was last to wake up and it seemed that Qrow was yet to mature out of his Beacon habits. That's why Taiyang was standing in the backyard of his house with several layers of utterly horrendous make-up on his face. Ruby looked confused but Yang was barely holding herself together.

"Now, can you explain to me, how did this happen?" He asked and gestured towards a car-sized crater near the house. He was clearly angry but neither of the girls could take him seriously. Yang , who was knocked out at the time, looked down at Ruby. She was fidgeting a bit and awkwardly poked her fingers together.

"A spar got out of hand?" She weakly tried.

Tai looked at the crater one more time and then at the girls. His eyes got wider and his anger changed to worry. "Yang, what happened?"

Yang looked down at her hands and thought whether or not to tell him what really happened. Semblances going insane, possible magic and ridiculous amounts of collateral damage… "Ember Celica overheated and the ammo blew up." She tried to play it cool, Ruby's little projects blew up all the time and aside from having to pay for a new window and paint the wall she got away with it. "I'm fine, it's nothing too bad, although I will need a new weapon." She really didn't want to waste her time going to the hospital. Both her and Ruby knew enough about the first aid to assess the damage and she would be fine in a few days.

Tai just signed and went into the garage. A few seconds later he walked out with a shovel in hand. "Okay then. Ruby, clean your mess." He put the shovel into Ruby's hands. "And no aura or semblance, you will do it properly." Ruby stared at the shovel, then at her father. Her shoulders then slumpen and she sulkily went to dig.

"Yang-"

"I'm fine!"

"Okay then… but take it easy. I will give you some money for the repairs. Now, let's go inside, I have to get this mess off my face."

-BBW-

"Why aren't you changing, Yang?" Ruby asked her sister. It was quite late and they were getting ready to call it a day. At least Ruby was, Yang stood near the doors with a contemplative expression on her face. After a moment of thinking she turned to look Ruby in the eyes.

"I want to go out with you and see if this whole silver eyes thing is true or not." She said with full seriousness.

Ruby's eyes shot wide but then she became slightly apprehensive. "Yang… we already made a mess yesterday and you are still injured!" She tried to talk Yang out of it. She wasn't against going on a quick hunt but the last few days were wild without throwing actual magic into the mix.

Yang just rolled her eyes, brushing the issues off. "Don't worry sis, it won't be anything big. We find a grimm, pin it down and you do the whole glowy eyes thing and we will see if it does anything." She quickly explained.

"But what about dad? I don't think he will let you sneak out when you are hurt." Ruby still wasn't sure. It sounded easy and might even be fun. Usually she just went for the kill as fast as possible, capture wasn't something she thought of.

"Dad is dead to the world right now. I think I could start blasting music or set the house on fire and he wouldn't notice." Yang deadpanned.

Ruby tried to come up with another excuse but found none her sister wouldn't brush off as her being either too lazy or childish. So she just signed and went to get her scythe.

-BBW-

It took them quite some time to find even a single grimm. A small confused creep. Ruby tried to catch it with a swarm of her petals but was too afraid to kill it by accident. Yang, deciding it was enough, simply jumped above it and axe-kicked it into the ground. Then she stepped on its neck and expectantly looked at Ruby. Her sister stood two feet in front of the downed grimm, she looked into Yang's eyes one more time to get a small boost of confidence and started chanting. Creep, that before was alternating between trying to snap at Yang's legs and angry whining, started thrashing like Ruby just insulted it's existence. When Ruby reached the fourth line it grew still and Yang decided to take away her eyes from her catch to see how Ruby was doing. Petals floated in the air around her but it wasn't the crazy storm that she saw yesterday. It was controlled, quiet, almost serene. Like standing in its eye. While nature's wrath would rage around they would be unaffected. And lo and behold, mistlike wisps of silvery light were trailing off of her irises. Ruby locked eyes with her. Yang gave her a wide smile and a nod of encouragement. Ruby then spoke her fifth line, the glow grew in strength and the grimm under Yang's feet released a pitiful howl. Ruby made a step forward, kneeled in front of it and looked the abomination right in the eyes. Small parts of its head turned into gray stone and after a second red light in the creep's eyes went out and it slowly started to evaporate in a form of black smoke. The two sisters, now alone, looked into each other's wide disbelieving eyes.

-BBW-

"Why are you in my bed again?" Yang asked as Ruby made herself comfortable under her arm.

"It's cold and you are warm!"

"Fine, but be careful with the burns." With a small laugh she decided to ignore it, hopefully Ruby wouldn't roll over her hands. Both of them had more pressing concerns right now. Magic was real. And Ruby could use it. While her sister had a bit of a paradigm shift over the fact that she couldn't explain everything using exact sciences and machinery Yang had another problem.

"Hey Rubes."

"Mhm?"

"I think you just won the whole best huntress competition. I doubt anyone could kill grimm with a wink." She tried to play it off but it really bothered her. Her little sister would run off to be the greatest huntress and she would have to continue being an average one.

Ruby pressed into her side and craned her head to see Yang's face. "I will figure it out! I don't care if you can't into magic. People weren't made to fly and yet we made airships. I will find a way! Just… give me some time."