Nanosuit and Soul Magic: A Crysis/RWBY crossover

chapter 25

The girls are gonna have questions. I can’t blow this off, not after the spectacle I made. I need to tell them something, and you know what?

I’m gonna tell them the truth. Not the whole truth, that would be stupid and needlessly risky, but enough of the truth. Alice is my little sister, who I was forced to leave in a foster home before my last deployment. I might dissemble a little bit over the exact reason Mom and Dad are not...around, though. It’s not like they’re gonna force me to talk about it, right?

Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to tell them exactly how my cozy little family fell the fuck apart. Like, what would I tell them? ‘Oh, well I sent my mom off to the loony bin after she tried to dig Satan out of Dad’s heart with a goddamn screwdriver. Didn’t do it soon enough, though, ‘cuz Dad kicked it anyway a few weeks later from the stress! Then, I joined the military and left my sister to the tender mercies of the privatized foster care industry. I was almost ready for her to come live with me, but then, whoopsies, I mostly died, got into a war with a bunch of aliens, then got beamed onto a different planet!’

I...just...

...

An alarm starts beeping somewhere below me. I guess it’s time for the trip down to the festival grounds. At this point, it might do me some good, too.

You know, I guess this is a net positive, really. The fact that I can be bothered about this shit means that SECOND might be keeping less of a stranglehold on my overall emotional state. Guilt and sorrow are only rarely the kind of things that wind up helping in a mission, and yet here I am, being a guilty, mopey bastard.

A couple of thumps down from the girls’ room, footsteps, rustling cloth, and finally the sound of the door opening. Might as well go ahead and join them.

The glass in the window got replaced while we were out. Polycarbonates, thermoplastics, tempered materials...well, it looks like somebody splurged on a bulletproof windowpane. Gotta be either Ironwood or Ozpin, I’ll figure out who and thank them.

Not locked, though. I’ll need to have a chat with them about necessary security precautions. Right now, though, it just means I can climb in without waiting for one of them to unlock the window.

Their heads swivel, and they turn to look at me. They don’t say anything, though, so I guess I go first.

“Right. So, I have a bit of explaining to do.”

“You don’t...have to tell us about it if you don’t want to.” And there’s Ruby, trying to spare my feelings. Could’ve sworn it’s supposed to be the other way around.

Weiss nods. “That’s right, you don’t need to feel obligated to share anything personal.” Blake nods in agreement without saying anything, and Yang...just sort of stands there. The other three turn to look at her, and she shrugs. “Well, I really do want to know who Alice is...”

Seeing the looks that her teammates are giving her, Yang hurries up and finishes with “...but hey, I guess that’s your business.”

“I still think I owe you an explanation. Long story short, Alice is my little sister. I had to leave her in a foster home when I went to join the military, since our parents are not...around. I’d promised she could come live with me after my last deployment, which turned to to be the one where this happened,” I said, gesturing to my second skin.

“So now, she thinks I’m dead, and I left her in a crappy bargain-bin orphanage when I went traipsing off to another planet.”

And there it is, out in the open. Part of it, anyway. I feel just a little dishonest, skipping over a pretty huge part of the whole ‘personal reveal’ thing, but telling them exactly the situation with my family would be more trouble than it’s worth.