Remnant of my heart || RWBY x S/I

5 // The corvid, the cleaving, the call.

/// Paused. ///

Jaune pointed into the sky, and in as nervous a voice he could muster (that amount of voice crack had to be done on purpose, Lea had thought) said:

"Guys, that thing's circling back." He left an unnatural pause in between the sentences. "What're we gonna do?"

Weiss jumped in after him, barely clipping the heels of Jaune's words.

"Look, we have no intentions of dilly-dallying," Lea chortled a little at the funny phrase (obviously-British turns of phrase always sounded odd in an American accent), "Our objective is right in front of us." She said, gesturing vaguely to the Relics (and Lea by proxy).

Ruby did much the same, also leaving no breathing room, as if she agreed with Weiss on instinct. Odd behaviour considering they just met yesterday (from Lea's knowledge).

"She's right. Our mission is to grab an artefact and make it back to the cliffs." She and Weiss nodded, "There's no point in fighting these things."

"Run and live." Jaune concurred, "That is an idea I can get behind."

Huh. Now that they were all actual flesh-and-blood people, hearing someone use 'that is' instead of 'that's' sounded really uncanny to Lea. She shuddered.

The (future) leaders of RWBY and JNPR approached the ruins, driving out Lea to finally join up with the rest of the group. She made the mistake of standing next to Nora, who made the quiet 'neigh' noise again, upon seeing Ruby pick up the white knight piece...

...Lea took a few steps to the left and diacreetly hid behind Weiss.

The Deathstalker cried out again, struggling to pull its stinger out from the ice. As the spider-web-like cracks formed in the relatively solid ice formation, Ren called out that it was "Time we left."

"Right. Let's go." Ruby said in an uncharacteristically subdued and normal pitch, shovelling the air above her arm with her palm in a beckoning notion before running off in an eastward direction, everyone else trailing behind.

As expected, no one took notice of Lea.

Even Yang and Blake, who straggled behind for a moment -the former watching her sister with a sense of admiration and pride- tended toward ignoring the uniform-clad stranger.

Y'know, 'hard cuts' in visual media do a lot of heavy lifting. Or in Lea's case, running.

Having to had run all the way from the pedistal with the relics to the ruins wherein they would later fight both the Deathstalker and the Nevermore without the boost of near-vinstant adrenaline, Lea suddenly felt the years of inexercise that came after lockdown finally catch up to her (which wasn't hard, Lea wasn't at all a trained huntress).

By the time they had actually made it and had split up in pairs to hide behind the old, grey pillars, Lea found herself (shockingly) widlnded, panting, and out in the open. Perfectly vulnerable if the Nevermore were to strike.

Which it did.

/// Now playing: rhythm practice :] (menacing) - AZALI ///

Suddenly swooping down from its perch on the tower in the dirstance, it charged forward and managed to snag Lea in its talons.

She cried out in both surprise and pain. Mostly pain. The Nevermore's sharp talons dug deep into her shoulder blades, making each nerve ending there feel like it was constantly exploding every tenth of a second.

"YWUAUGH!"

"LEA!!" A shrill voice called out. Ruby's shrill voice.

She... remembered her... enough to care about her...