The From Dust Till Dawn shop was quiet for a late evening the kind of quiet that made the old shopkeeper comfortable enough to leave the front mostly unwatched while he restocked in the back.
In the book and magazine aisle, Ruby Rose had been standing in the same spot for the better part of twenty minutes, hood down, red cloak pooling slightly at her feet, a weapons catalogue open in both hands with the kind of reverence most people reserved for scripture.
Kaito leaned against the shelf beside her, arms folded, sunglasses sitting low on his nose despite the fact that it was night and they were indoors. His dark gakuran jacket was immaculate. His white hair looked like it had argued with a pillow and won. He was working his way through a cookie he'd lifted from Ruby's bag without asking, watching her deliberate with the patient amusement of someone who had absolutely nowhere better to be.
"You know," he said, finishing the cookie and brushing crumbs off his sleeve, "you can just buy everything. I'll cover it. Doesn't really matter to me."
Ruby didn't look up. She turned a page with the careful reverence of a scholar. "That's not the point."
"What is the point?"
"The point is choosing." She finally lowered the magazine just enough to look at him over the top of it, deeply serious. "I only have a little pocket money left. I have to be strategic."
Kaito reached into her bag and took another cookie.
"Kaito."
"Mm."
"I said I have a little left. Because I may have " she hesitated, wincing slightly, " gone a little overboard on cookies earlier."
"These cookies?"
"…Yes."
He looked at the cookie in his hand. Then at her. Then he ate it anyway. Ruby made a sound of profound betrayal and pulled her bag closer to her chest, hugging both it and the magazine.
"This one," she said, holding up the catalogue and pointing to a double-page spread of a Dust-integrated sniper configuration, "has a rotating barrel assembly that's incredible, Kaito. Look at the tolerances on that."
"Mm."
"And this one " she flipped back three pages " is a shortsword that converts into a riot shield, which is honestly inspired design because who expects a sword to also be a shield
"Ruby."
"And then this magazine " she tucked the first under her arm and held up a second, slightly dog-eared one she'd grabbed from the rack " just arrived and it has concept designs in the back section that aren't even in production yet, they're just theoretical, but the articulation on this one hinge mechanism alone
"Ruby."
She stopped. Looked at him. His expression hadn't changed.
"…I know I'm doing the thing again," she said.
"You're doing the thing again."
She lowered both magazines and stared at the shelf with genuine anguish. "They're just all so cool, and I only have enough for one, maybe two if I skip the magazine, but I don't want to skip the magazine because of the hinge
"I'll buy the shop's stock."
She stared at him.
He shrugged, the movement barely registering. "However much it costs. Doesn't really matter."
"…You can't just do that."
"Why not?"
"Because she fumbled " because that's the whole point is the choosing, Kaito, I just said that
"You've been choosing for twenty minutes."
"I'm close."
He looked at her. She looked at him. He reached into her bag. She slapped his hand away without looking, pure muscle memory, and went back to the magazine.
He almost smiled. Almost.
He settled back against the shelf, hands in his pockets now, and let her work. The shop was warm and quiet. Somewhere in the back, the shopkeeper was moving boxes. Outside, Vale went about its night.
Kaito tilted his head back slightly and yawned, long and unhurried, the kind of yawn that suggested he could stand here for another hour without complaint.
Ruby turned another page and made a small, devastated noise of admiration at whatever she'd found.
He waited.
Then the bell above the door rang, and Roman Torchwick walked in.
Roman barely glanced at them as he and his men spread through the shop — Kaito registered the weapons immediately, the case one of them was already opening, the way the shopkeeper's voice jumped up an octave from the back. Four henchmen. One man in a white suit who moved like he owned whatever room he was standing in.
Ruby had her headphones on.
Kaito had his sunglasses on.
Neither of them moved yet.
The henchman who noticed Ruby grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, getting a face full of surprised silver eyes and a pair of headphones halfway down her neck.
"Alright kid hands where I can see 'em. Hey. I said hands in the air! You got a death wish or something!?"
Ruby blinked. Looked at the sword. Looked at the man.
"Yes?"
Kaito didn't look away from the shelf. "Don't know, Ruby. Maybe he just wanted to chat."
The henchman jabbed a finger at her. "Yes! I'm robbing you!"
"Ohhh…" Ruby said.
Then the henchman went down because Ruby hit him, and Kaito exhaled through his nose and stepped sideways as the man sailed past him into a display case.
The second henchman came around fast with a gun up. "Freeze!"
Kaito appeared beside him
not dramatically, not with any particular announcement, just there and placed one hand on the man's shoulder in a way that was almost friendly.
"You know," he said pleasantly, "it's not great manners to point weapons at people." He tilted his head. "Especially the pretty ones."
The henchman had maybe a half-second to process that before Kaito hit him. It was one punch. It was enough. The man crumpled, and Kaito stepped over him with the casual indifference of someone stepping over a puddle.
Ruby was already spinning Crescent Rose into scythe form when they went through the window together.
Kaito followed them out, hands back in his pockets, and watched Ruby carve through the remaining henchmen with the focused joy of someone doing exactly what they were built for. He stood to one side, leaning against the shop's exterior wall, and at some point produced another cookie from somewhere — Ruby's bag was still inside, so the logistics were unclear — and ate it while Roman's men were systematically and enthusiastically dismantled.
When Roman raised his cane and smiled that particular smile of a man cutting his losses, Kaito glanced up at the building behind him, already doing the math.
He chased them to the roof mostly because Ruby was chasing them to the roof, and it seemed like the sort of thing you followed your childhood friend into.
He arrived to find Ruby in a standoff, Roman's Bullhead rising, a red Dust gem already leaving Roman's hand.
Kaito stood slightly to the left of center, eating the last of the cookie, watching the gem arc through the air.
"Don't mind me," he said to no one in particular. "I'll just be eating this."
Then the explosion happened, and Glynda Goodwitch appeared, and things got considerably more complicated.
Later, in the dark room under the bright light, Ruby sat across from a tablet computer and Glynda's disapproving pacing, looking like someone who had been caught doing exactly the right thing in exactly the wrong way.
Kaito had pulled his chair sideways and was sitting in it backwards, arms folded over the backrest, sunglasses still on.
"I hope you realize," Glynda said, "that your actions tonight will not be taken lightly."
"They started it!" Ruby said.
"Yeah, Ruby, you tell them," Kaito added, without looking up.
Glynda's expression suggested she had opinions about that. She kept them to herself, mostly, and eventually stepped aside.
Ozpin walked in. Mug in one hand. Plate of cookies in the other. He leaned in and looked at Ruby's face with the particular attention of a man confirming something he already suspected.
"Ruby Rose." A pause. "You have silver eyes."
Ruby opened her mouth. Closed it.
Ozpin set the cookies on the table and settled into the chair across from them.
"So. Where did you learn to do this?"
"S-Signal Academy."
"Yep," Kaito said pleasantly. "Third best student in the year. Yours truly being first, of course."
Glynda wrote something on her tablet. Her expression did not change.
Ozpin talked with Ruby — about Signal, about Qrow, about Huntsmen and why she wanted to be one and Ruby talked back faster and faster until she was making karate noises pew pachow) and Ozpin was watching her with the quiet amusement of a man who had seen many things and somehow found this one refreshing.
Eventually he turned, taking them both in.
"You want to come to my school?"
"More than anything," Ruby said immediately.
"Sure," Kaito said.
Ozpin glanced at Glynda. Glynda looked at her tablet. Her expression was that of someone who had many professional opinions she was professionally suppressing.
Ozpin looked back.
"Well," he said. "Okay."
Ruby's face did something enormous and luminous.
Kaito leaned back in his chair and took a cookie off the plate.
The Vale airship to Beacon was large enough that you could find a quiet corner if you wanted one.
Ruby did not want one. Ruby was pressed against the glass wall with both hands flat on the surface, hood down, eyes wide, watching Signal Academy shrink into the landscape below with the expression of someone watching a beloved painting get smaller in a rearview mirror.
"You can see it from here," she said, mostly to herself. "You can actually still see it."
Kaito was sitting on a nearby bench with his legs stretched out, ankles crossed, arms folded, head tilted back at an angle that suggested he might be asleep. He wasn't. He was listening to everything.
"Beacon's home now," Yang said warmly, an arm around Ruby's shoulders.
Ruby leaned into her. "Yeah."
Yang Xiao Long was, Kaito had determined some years ago, approximately the human equivalent of a bonfire — loud, warm, liable to cause damage if you stood too close without preparation, and genuinely difficult not to like. She'd shown up at Ruby's door enough times over the years that Kaito had a reasonable catalogue of her moods. Right now she was in the proudest older sister alive mood, which meant Ruby was going to be hugged at least twice more before they landed.
The airship banked slightly and the view shifted, Beacon's towers coming into frame over a broad stretch of water, the academy sitting on its cliffs like something that had decided it belonged there and dared the landscape to argue.
Ruby made a small sound.
Kaito opened one eye behind his sunglasses.
"It's big," she said.
"It is," Yang agreed.
"Bigger than Signal."
"Considerably."
Ruby was quiet for a moment. Then, quietly, not quite asking: "I got moved ahead two years."
Yang looked at her. "I know."
"I don't want people to think I'm —" Ruby stopped. Started again. "I just want to be normal. Normal knees. Normal everything."
"Ruby."
"I don't want to be the bee's knees, Yang, I genuinely don't want to be any kind of knees
"You are special," Yang said, with the simple certainty of someone stating a fact about weather.
Ruby made a conflicted noise and stared back out the window.
Kaito had been quiet through all of this. He unfolded his arms, sat up slightly, and looked at the back of Ruby's head.
"You know what Signal called you when they filed your placement assessment?" he said.
Ruby turned. "What?"
"Anomalous proficiency." He said it the way you'd read a sign. "Student demonstrates anomalous proficiency with oversized close-range artillery scythe configuration. Recommend advanced placement." He paused. "That's what they wrote."
Ruby stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"I read it."
"That's Kaito, that's a private file
"Mm." He settled back. "You're not special instead of being normal, Ruby. You're both. The people worth knowing will figure that out pretty fast."
Ruby looked at him for a moment. Then she looked at Yang, who shrugged in a he's not wrong kind of way.
Ruby turned back to the window.
"…You're still annoying," she said.
"I know."
"You ate all my cookies."
"Most of them."
"All of them, Kaito, I counted
"You didn't count before you left the house."
"I counted after."
"That's not how counting works."
Yang covered her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.
The moment broke when the sound of someone being comprehensively ill reached them from the back of the ship.
Yang turned. Ruby turned. Kaito tilted his head.
A boy with blond hair and a green scarf was hunched over near the rear windows, one hand braced against the wall, achieving a color that didn't suit him.
Yang wrinkled her nose. "That is unfortunate."
"He should look at the horizon," Ruby said, with genuine sympathy. "It helps."
"Or not take airships," Kaito offered.
"Kaito."
"That's also an option."
Ruby was already moving toward the boy with the particular purposeful concern of someone who helped people reflexively, before her brain finished asking whether she'd been invited to. Kaito watched her go, then watched Yang watch her go, the older girl's expression doing something fond and exasperated at once.
Yang glanced back at him. "You're coming to Beacon."
"Apparently."
"Ozpin just said yes. Just like that."
"He did." Kaito adjusted his sunglasses. "Seemed like a reasonable man."
Yang studied him the way she sometimes did like she was taking inventory, trying to decide which category he went in. She'd been doing it since she was twelve. She hadn't filed him anywhere yet.
"You're going to be the weird one," she said finally.
"I'm already the weird one."
"The scary weird one."
"Yang." He looked at her. The sunglasses made it impossible to tell exactly where he was looking, which she had told him on multiple occasions was extremely irritating. "I went to a Dust shop with your sister to help her pick a magazine. I ate her cookies. I'm not scary."
"You knocked a guy out with one punch."
"He was pointing a gun at her."
Yang opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked back toward where Ruby was now patting the green-scarfed boy on the back and asking him earnest questions about his vestibular system.
"…Fair," she said.
The airship's announcement chime sounded, and the hologram of Glynda Goodwitch materialized at the front of the cabin — composed, precise, addressing the assembled students with the tone of someone who had given this speech before and found it adequately true each time.
Kaito listened with one ear and watched Beacon grow larger through the glass with the other.
Privileged few. Prestigious academy. Time of peace. Duty to uphold it.
He'd heard variations of it before. Different words, different speakers, same architecture underneath — you are here because the world is fragile and someone has to stand in the gap.
He didn't disagree with that.
He just thought about the Dust shop shopkeeper with his hands raised, and Roman Torchwick flicking a cigar like he owned the night, and the way the henchmen had moved through that store not panicked, not improvising. Practiced. Organized.
Grab the Dust. Crystals. Burn. Uncut.
He filed it away behind his sunglasses and said nothing.
The hologram disappeared. Several students gasped at Beacon appearing close now through the windows, towers catching the last of the evening light.
Ruby had apparently succeeded in stabilizing the green-scarfed boy enough that he was standing upright again, still pale, but listening to whatever she was saying with the slightly overwhelmed expression of someone who had expected to suffer alone and instead gotten a full wellness consultation.
Yang materialized next to Kaito.
"She's already making friends," Yang said.
"She always does," he said.
"You don't."
"I have Ruby."
"That's one."
"It's enough."
Yang looked at him sideways. He looked straight ahead at Beacon.
The ship descended.
They were nearly at the dock when Yang made a sharp noise and lifted her shoe.
"Oh no
Ruby spun around from three feet away. Took one look. Her hand flew to her mouth.
"Yang
"Don't."
"Yang, you have
"I know."
"It's on the it got on the sole
"Ruby, I know
"Get away from me," Ruby said, backing up immediately, "get away
"I'm not moving toward you
"Get away from me, get away from me
"Ruby."
Kaito stepped to the side, creating clear distance from both of them, hands in his pockets, watching.
Several nearby students turned to look.
He looked back at them, expression unreadable behind the dark glasses.
They looked away.
The ship touched down.