RWBY Through Worlds

28: Resistance Makes Me Stronger

Shine found Jaune, Yang, and Ren holed up in a small shack trying to outlast the cold and snow that was falling.

Oscar was not with them.

"Shine!" Jaune said. "Oh, thank goodness! Oscar, he's..."

"He's gone," Yang said.

"Gone?" Shine turned white.

"Salem...her Grimm took him," Ren said.

"What?!" Shine almost screamed that.

"It didn't kill him," Jaune said quickly, "we don't think. Seems like it was capturing him. It knocked him out and carried him away, we're not sure where. We lost it, but it wasn't eating him...but the thing is, it...talked."

"The Grimm talked?" Shine said.

"Yeah," Yang said.

"It said 'no,'" Ren shook his head, "when I said to give him back."

"It said no..." Shine said.

Strangely she didn't seem scared. "I thought grimm didn't talk."

"They don't," Yang said. "But this one did."

Shine tilted her head. "Weird."

"Aren't you...freaked out?" Jaune asked. "That's not normal."

"Sorry, the devil creatures where I live talk," Shine shrugged like that was nothing to say. "I found it more of a positive turn that they don't here, the taunting is really pretty tiresome...but if it does, I guess it must be upgraded, huh."

"You...make no d--- sense!" Yang said angrily.

"But it took Oscar," Jaune said.

Shine thought.

Then she looked out the window. "Don't worry, it won't kill him," she said after a pause.

"How do you know?" Ren asked.

"Salem will want him alive," Shine said. "She'll want to kill Ozma herself not let her grimm do it. It beat him up?"

"Yeah," Jaune said.

"That much they can do," Shine said. "But he'll be alive...unless one of them kills him. Assuming they want informants, we have a little time."

"Where is he?" Ren asked. "Can you find him?"

Shine's eyes lit up...and then faded. "No," she said.

"No?" Yang said.

"So...magic?" Jaune asked.

"Yeah, or grimm proximity could also cloud it up. They're also forces of darkness," Shine said. "I can't see them, not that I tried, but I couldn't anyway, believe me, you don't really want to see what they look like inside."

"What do we look like?" Ren asked.

"Yourselves," Shine shrugged. "Can't really explain it...I also can't see dead people, so no cult stuff here. But I'm sure Oscar is not dead."

"How sure?" Yang said.

"Oscar is our guide," Shine said. "Also I knew when he was falling to his death. If he died, I would know, trust me." She put a hand to her heart. "But I do feel...a sense of foreboding... I don't think he's doing so well."