RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC18: Gold (Kip and Penny)-3

[Opening song--"pure gold" by half alive.]

Right after the birthday party, there was the expedition.

Penny and Kip's former team weren't all joining them. This area was not known for large amounts of Grimm, and they thought Penny would easily handle anything they found, and Mercury's presence would be insurance.

[Lol]

Mercury had been working with different people as kind of an extra insurance for the last month or so, and all anyone knew, outside of his team and the small group of heroes, was that he'd been removed from Emerald's. The popular rumor was that Raven had felt his skill would benefit from more diverse assignments since he worked well as backup.

They didn't question it.

Penny had heard from Ruby that there might be more to it, and from Yang that Emerald had dumped Mercury, and she understood enough to see that Mercury was too unhappy for it to be really just a change of assignment based on utility.

But she didn't ask him about it. She'd learned some tact over the years.

Kip, on the other hand, had not yet quite learned that people don't like questions like that and made the mistake of asking him why he wasn't still working with Emerald.

Mercury didn't really answer the question. "None of your d--- business, robo-boy," he said instead.

Kip didn't really take offense to the robo-boy because Penny was a robot and she was awesome. But he knew Mercury was being rude.

He backed off right away.

"Well, Mercury, have you met our other teammates?" Penny asked.

"The anti-social ones?" Mercury said.

This time Penny didn't register it as insulting; she didn't see that term as really a negative, just a fact.

"They can be," she said.

The teammates gave her a look, but they were more used to her by now and didn't say anything about it.

"They're all Mistralians," Penny went on cheerfully. "I heard your old team were Atlesians, aside from Emerald, so I'm sure they were very regimented, but we're not really. These are actually triplets."

The triplets were one set of identical ones, save for their height--one being a bit shorter and thinner and then one who didn't look like a twin but was obviously their brother.

Mercury didn't think he'd be able to keep them straight--and didn't really care.

"Athos and Porthos Steel." Penny pointed to the ones who were identical. "And the other one is Aramis."

He nodded.

As usual Mistral names all had a certain sound to them. Shine had once said it was like Greek or Latin, whatever those were.

"And Darren Fields is the last one, no relation," Penny said.

Though they were always hanging out, so you really couldn't tell the differences.

Darren was also the most friendly out of them and nodded with a smile.

Mercury didn't return it.

[Some people may know this, but as the story isn't very popular, I'm guessing most won't know the names of the three musketeers, and Darren is my shortening D'Artagnan  (pronounced "Dar-tan-ion") because that just didn't sound like a real name for RWBY. He's the guy who joins the Musketeers. He's not in the Disney Mickey mouse version, so very few people even know that anymore. Last name is a reference to D'Artagnan being from a farm originally.]