RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC88: Bait (Heroes)-1

After a day had passed of trying to pick up the pieces of Menagerie, Raven wanted to go back to Argus.

She'd tried to do damage control with the furious Faunus who'd begun to blame this whole thing on Argus already.

Gira and Kali tried to convince them that it wasn't the heroes fault, and some of them believe it, but others were too angry or grief stricken to listen to reason.

Cinder wisely stayed on the ship in all this time, and so did Roman and Neo. They knew the White Fang wouldn't welcome the sight of them.

The captured bandits cooperated as well as could be expected. Mino was salty about Hypnosia letting him get caught, but she told him it was to save his ungrateful life, and that seemed to shut him up for a while.

She treated the whole thing with an air of resignation.

The finned Faunus, who they caught easily since she'd been too out of her mind to hide, remained in shock from the effects of the Deimos... In fact it was as if it was worse for her than for the others. She hadn't said a word and didn't eat either.

Some of the natives identified her as Dolly Fina, a newcomer to the island as of several months ago. Presumably she'd been spying for the tribe that whole time, but since she didn't speak, no one knew anything more about her.

Hypnosia claimed that she didn't know much about her either, that she didn't know a lot of the ex-Fang members of the tribe. Mino refused to answer any questions.

But they did finally tell Blake where Illea was. Turned out the answer really wasn't that complicated. She'd been kidnapped and hidden in a storage shed by one of the empty houses left by the Faunus who moved to Mistral. They'd intended to set her free later, perhaps even taking her with them. Mala thought she could be quite useful.

Illea was hungry, tired, and cramped, but otherwise none the worse for the wear aside from the bump on her head. She was pretty mad she'd been captured so easily though, and that she'd not figured out that Dolly was suspicious.

"But who suspects a nurse?" She shrugged.

The news about Blake expecting did cheer her up a little.

Pyrrha and Jaune both decided that they would just take their kids back home.

"Since this was a trap," Pyrrha said, "there's no reason to stay... I'm kind of glad actually. I would hate to be away for so long...and they can't handle more people here now anyway."

"Yeah, I just wish I was convinced that Argus is still not a target in some way," Jaune said. "Even if it's not how we thought, it doesn't feel safe there either. But then, nowhere is really safe if they keep expanding."

"I'm sure we'll find a way," Pyrrha said. "Besides...clearly the kids can handle themselves."

Ben had won some new respect from the other kids on board for actually fighting the Grimm, and Polly was enjoying the attention also.

"Pyrrha, what are you teaching those kids?" Yang asked her at one point after she'd heard them tell the story again about how they'd "taken the criminal lady back to her cell."

"I just made sure they knew how to fight," Pyrrha said. "Every child should know that, don't you think?"

"They're already like mini huntsmen," Yang said. She looked thoughtful. "I liked how they call you 'mama' and 'dad' now. That's cool."

"They didn't for a while," Pyrrha said. "And we didn't want to make them do anything they didn't feel comfortable with, but as we got closer, it felt like they were always ours, somehow, even if it's only been a year or two. And...most of them are old enough to be my siblings, not kids, but still...well, we said they could call us that if they wanted. The little ones did first, but then even Ben started. I just melted." She smiled.