Author's Note:
First, for all of you coming into this series for the first time, I will suggest Bloody Snow Volume 1 to start with since this story is intended to be read in series. As a quick link, the story is on this site at /s/10558972
Next, I own absolutely nothing to do with RWBY and I thank Roosterteeth and Monty Oum (Rest in Peace) for creating a series that has captured my imagination enough to allow the creation of this story.
Finally, I welcome you all to RWBY: Bloody Snow: Volume 2! Please Enjoy!
Weiss awoke to the sound of yelling in the hall. As she started to get up, warm arms wrapped themselves around her, pulling her backwards under the light cover. She felt Ruby's breathing as she was held not too tight, but enough so she couldn't get away. She smiled and dismissed the ruckus in the hall as just one of the usual early morning disturbances that were common at Beacon.
The noises retreated, leaving comfortable silence in its wake. She heard no sound except their breathing and her own heartbeat as she lay in Ruby's arms, closing her eyes as the warmth called her back to her wonderful dream. She liked how Ruby was always so warm that even in the middle of the winter with the lightest sheet, she felt warm like lying in the sun on a nice summer day.
Sometime later, possibly after she'd dozed off, the noise returned, growing steadily louder until two loud bangs echoed around their room. Weiss was quick to react, yanking the blanket up to cover herself and Ruby just as the door flew open, slamming into the wall only to bounce back and stop when it met Ren's hand.
Behind him Jaune, Yang, Blake, and Pyrrha looked a little frantic with varying degrees of disheveledness that said they'd been woken rather abruptly as well.
Ren stood in the doorway. His fist closed around a scroll that Weiss could tell was Nora's as she'd painted it pink. His eyes were wild and it was obvious he was panicking. "Nora's missing."
Everyone was quiet for a moment, Weiss snapping out of her sleep to the situation before her. She was about to tell everyone what to do when Ruby popped her head out from under the covers. Her hair was stuck to the corner of her mouth and she brushed it away, looking at all the people staring into their room.
Pyrrha pushed Jaune out of view of the room and Yang grabbed Ren by the collar, dragging him away as he protested. "Nora's missing, we have to do something quick!"
"What do you expect them to do without clothes, moron?" Yang responded just as Blake shut the door.
"Good morning Weiss." Ruby said happily, her voice cracking from her dry throat.
"Morning, Ruby." Weiss replied, dropping the blanket and wrapping an arm around her girlfriend.
"I sort of wish we could just stay in bed for today." Ruby said sadly. Her arms tightened around Weiss for a second before she released her.
"I do too." Weiss admitted as she got up and started for the washroom. "But we have to find Nora first. Heaven knows where that girl has gotten to."
"Can we shower together?" Ruby asked, amazed at how unembarrassed she felt to ask now that they'd experienced each others bodies more fully than she'd ever admit she had dreamed about.
"Good idea. It'll save time." Weiss nodded walking into the other room as Ruby jumped up and followed close behind her.
"We'll have the day to ourselves after we find Nora, right?" Ruby asked like a kid asking for candy at the store.
Weiss smiled as she pulled Ruby into a kiss that didn't last long enough. "Ruby, I promise we can have all the days to ourselves."
Weiss twisted the tap on the shower and got the water nice and hot before stepping in. Ruby followed hesitantly, her shyness returning full force all of a sudden.
"Turn around and I'll do your back." Weiss said as she poured shower gel into her hand and got it to foam up. "Then you can help me with mine."
Ruby nodded, more to set her resolve than to acknowledge Weiss. She knew she'd been working towards this point of their relationship for a long time, but it was so entirely different that she seemed to be making a bigger deal of it than it was. I'll just have to try harder to get used to this. She thought as she turned and let Weiss massage the soap into her skin.
After the shower, Ruby and Weiss met Ren and company in the common room a floor below their room. Yang was talking to Ren as he shook his head continuously and noticing the arrival of their hostess and her team leader, Pyrrha approached glancing over at Ren's back. Jaune was talking to Claude who looked like he'd seen a ghost.
"Hey, Jaune is asking Claude questions. He mentioned something called project Grimm sphere, and now he won't say a word." Pyrrha informed Weiss and Ruby in a whisper. She glanced over her shoulder at Ren and turned back with a sigh. "Ren's freaking out a little bit. I think he blames himself for Nora's disappearance."
"Thanks." Weiss nodded before she raised her voice for everyone in the room to hear. "Okay. So I have a plan."
She paused to look at Jaune for the go ahead, which he gave with a nod as he turned to pay attention. The rest of the room fell silent, even Ren was paying his fullest attention to Weiss. She felt a wave of adrenaline rush through her as she settled into her natural element.
"This whole place is under 24 hour surveillance from a closed circuit security camera system. All we have to do is follow Nora from her last known location and we'll be able to find her." Weiss looked to Claude specifically for the next part. "And you will give me any information you have on project Grimm sphere, especially any parts that may include my friends."
Claude hung his head. "I am not permitted to do that, Miss Schnee."
"I am not asking. You will give me the information I want or I will obtain it myself." Weiss said quickly before returning to the rest of her friends. "The security office is in the next tower. Follow me."
Weiss set off with Ruby and Ren close behind. Everyone else followed them as Weiss walked almost imperiously through the halls and down the flight of stairs and up the flight leading to the adjacent tower. The group was once again surprised by their surroundings as Weiss walked straight up to the head of security who was sitting at his desk looking over some papers.
"I am using the main computer. Don't disturb me." Weiss walked straight passed the somewhat startled man who's arms were easily Weiss's shoulder width. It was obvious he was afraid of the young girl and he watched the group uneasily as they followed Weiss into the room behind him.
"Welcome. Weiss Schnee. Claude Lawrence. Identified six unknown subjects. Please identify." The room spoke through speakers as large guns came out of the walls, floor and ceiling, all rotating to aim at the group that had just entered.
"Just say your name." Weiss told everyone who seemed very nervous at the firepower aimed at them.
"Ruby Rose" Ruby said in her high pitched voice as she trembled nervously in front of the hundred guns that looked to be of a higher caliber than Crescent Rose.
"Identified. Ruby Rose. Verify." The room responded without missing a beat.
"Guest" Weiss said loudly to the room.
"Weiss Schnee. Administrator. Verified. Identified unknown subject four, Ruby Rose. Guest. Identified five unknown subjects. Please identify."
The process continued until all the remaining students identified themselves and Weiss verified their identification. "Weiss Schnee. Administrator. Verified. Identified unknown subject two, Blake Belladonna. Faunus. Guest. Identification complete. Welcome to White Castle Central Security monitoring station 4F."
The guns disappeared back into their hiding spots and Weiss waved for everyone to follow her as she went up to the front of the room and pulled up the outside camera facing the plane as they got off. Her fingers whizzed over the keyboard in front of her as she reached up and swiped the image off onto another screen and then pulled up the video of the party the previous night. Weiss set the computer to automatically fast forward as she and everyone else watched Nora and Ren dance together before Nora literally pulled Ren back to their room. They watched the door as the light in the hall changed from night to day. Then they watched as Nora ran from the room, skipping comically fast as she headed down the stairs and into the labyrinth of halls. Suddenly, there was a flash of black around Nora and then a message popped up saying the target was lost.
Weiss rewound the tape to the part just before the message appeared and found the screen flash black to a missing data message. Though she'd learned how to use the system as part of her homeschooling, she'd never encountered missing data. Her fingers hesitated over the keys as her mind refused to giver her anything useful to solve the problem.
"Would you mind letting me try?" Jaune asked as he stepped up behind Weiss.
"How would you know how to work this?" Weiss asked in response.
"Well… I didn't really get into Beacon with my fighting skills." Jaune said nervously as he felt Pyrrha's eyes on his back.
"Fine. Give it a try." Weiss sighed, stepping back. "Promote Jaune Arc, temporary administrator."
"Acknowledged. Jaune Arc is now Administrator." The system announced as Jaune stepped up to the keyboard Weiss had used.
"Now this is on a legacy server, so there should be a division between data and the pointers the system uses." Jaune explained as black boxes with white scrolling text appeared over the missing data screen.
"So…" Ruby asked, interested in learning something new about her fellow team leader.
"Whenever something is deleted, the pointer to the data is reset. The data stays until hard drive space runs out and then the system reclaims the data that's been deleted as free space. Until then, everything is still there." Jaune explained as he pressed one last key and a progress bar popped up. He stepped back from the keyboard and nodded to Weiss. "All I had to do was tell the system it still exists."
The missing data screen flashed out of existence to be replaced by an empty hallway.
"Thank you Jaune." Weiss said as she took her place to view the recovered footage.
Everyone was tense as Weiss rewound the tape slowly enough to see black shapes fly back across the hall. Once Nora was back to skipping, Weiss pressed the play button. The group watched as Nora stopped and looked to the right side of the hall and a black figure came flying toward her, his fist connecting with Nora's jaw. In the next instant, Nora fell limp and a second black figure from the other side of the hall came into view. He bound Nora's arms and legs before putting her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry as the other man pulled out his scroll and sent a message.
The two men walked to the right and disappeared. When Weiss tried to bring up the other camera, a small pop-up came instead saying that the footage was corrupt and unreadable. Weiss looked back at Jaune who shook his head. She swore loudly, surprising everyone around her. Weiss might not know much about computers, but she knew that data loss in the Schnee Corp servers was definitely an inside job.
"Sorry, that's all I can do." Weiss told Ren. Her voice was sad and pensive as her brain worked in overdrive. Weiss quickly pulled up the administrator project directory and switched the user to her father. Weiss knew he never changed his passwords and she'd hacked into his account by guessing his password ages before she knew that it would be useful to have access to the information.
"I cannot believe that you would break into your father's account!" Claude exclaimed, shocked at Weiss's actions within the system.
"Let's call it supervising." Weiss replied as she pulled up a list of ongoing projects and scrolled down to the g's. "Now would be a good time to give me the short version of Grimm Sphere." Weiss paused as her cursor highlighted the project that had a large red lock symbol beside it.
"I'm sorry." Claude apologized, his head sinking as he looked at the ground. Weiss didn't grace him with a response, and pulled up the file that was password protected.
"Perfect." Weiss said sarcastically to the group as she took a step back from the controls. "I have no clue what the password might be."
"Then allow me." Jaune said, stepping up beside Weiss. He pulled up a window with millions of tiny lines of code shifting over it. Over the next five minutes, he managed to break the encoding and decipher the file. What everyone read shocked even Weiss, who was expecting some type of gruesome dust experiment.
Weiss stared at the notes on the project before reading out the most important ones. "Dust experimentation in order to control the creatures of Grimm… Lead researcher, Roman Torchwick… Authorized capture of test subjects." Weiss fell silent at the last note.
Ruby, however, couldn't help but finish. "Optimal test subject found at Beacon… Nora Valkyrie."
"What does this mean?" Ren asked, his voice deadly quiet in the shocked silence. "Why is Torchwick working for Schnee Corp?"
Weiss shook her head, looking at the notes. She couldn't believe that her father had hired the criminal that had almost killed her teammate, but she realized he probably didn't know or care. As long as it was cost effective. "I don't know."
Ruby gave Ren a look and he started to turn away from the bank of monitors that everyone was watching. Weiss stepped up from where Jaune had just stepped away and pulled up a location map that surprised her more than anything. As everyone looked, trying to figure out what they were looking at a map of, Weiss turned to Claude.
"Get our stuff packed and on the plane. We're leaving before nightfall." Weiss ordered, casting a nervous glance at Ruby. Ren turned back to the monitor, his brain finally snapping into focus.
"Where are we going?" He asked quietly.
"We're returning to Beacon." Weiss replied as she tried to think of a better plan than she had.
"After we find Nora." Ruby added, noticing that Weiss was off in her own thoughts.
Weiss nodded, realizing that everyone except Ruby would be shocked by her plan that she realized was the only way that they'd be able to get Nora out of her father's and Torchwick's clutches alive.
"So here's the plan." Weiss looked at Jaune then Pyrrha, then Ren, Blake, Yang and finally Ruby before she let out her held breath and continued. "We're going to the basement to get Nora. But only a small team will work out effectively."
"I'm going." Ren said, his voice indicating he'd take no argument. Weiss nodded at him briefly.
"Ruby and I will go too. The rest of you should make sure all our stuff is on the plane, then wait there for us." Weiss swallowed at the memory of a threat her father had spoken to her many years ago. "If we don't come back by five in the evening, I want you to leave without us."
"We can't do that!" Jaune objected. Pyrrha nodded in agreement with him.
"Yeah, I'm not leaving Ruby!" Yang almost shouted.
Weiss let out a frustrated sigh. "If we're not back by five, we're not coming back. Ever." She ran through all the defensive weapons concealed in all the high security areas of the castle and hoped against hope that she wasn't leading her friends and the love of her life to slaughter.
Everyone was silent, digesting Weiss's statement. Finally, Ren broke the silence. "Get the plane ready. We're all going to need to get out of here fast if things are as bad as Weiss thinks they are."
Jaune nodded and left the room to get started on the packing. Pyrrha gave Ruby a hug and offered her hand to Weiss who took it and pulled her into a hug, surprising Pyrrha at the sudden change in behavior. Blake and Pyrrha left together, Blake looking back at Weiss and nodding before she disappeared through the door.
"I want you to promise me you won't do anything stupid." Yang said to Ruby, her big sister mode kicking in as she leaned down to meet Ruby's eyes at her level.
"I promise." Ruby said as Yang squeezed her in one of her typical bear hugs. "I'll be there at five."
"And you! You better come back too because I am not going to forgive you if you make Ruby cry!" Yang poked Weiss hard in the chest, her face dead serious. "And you don't want to get me mad."
"I'd never hurt Ruby." Weiss responded as if she was restating common knowledge. "And that means the two of us are regrettably stuck together in a dorm till the end of the year."
"Good. Just remember that you're not allowed to be fashionably late, so give 'em hell and get your ass to the plane!" Yang said before she walked away, leaving the team of three together.
"Best be off then." Weiss said, taking a deep breath and grabbing Ruby's hand.
Ruby gave her a quick squeeze before she twisted their fingers together, letting Weiss lead as they started on their long walk to the basement of the castle.
As they went down staircase after staircase, the castle around them that was always full of wide, branching hallways made of white marble, changed to narrow hallways with one exit on each end made of black marble and occasionally featured arches around the doorways that were made of granite.
"How far do we still have to go?" Ruby asked Weiss quietly as she continued to grip her hand. Weiss could tell Ruby was nervous from her sweating and her tendency to reach her dominant hand to her weapon.
"Not far. The area we want should be around this corner." Weiss said as she lead them around the corner to come face to face with a security guard.
He visibly stiffened as Weiss approached him, the large gun in his arms aimed almost at them but still off enough to show he wasn't going to shoot, yet.
"This area is off limits. Please leave." He announced, his voice was thick and gravelly as he watched the group in front of him stop.
Weiss had already instructed Ren to do nothing until Weiss told him to and he'd reluctantly agreed. Weiss already knew Ruby's fight style would only prove useful with crowd control and hoped she'd know that this one guard would be for Weiss to take care of.
"Why would an area of my castle be off limits to me?" Weiss feigned confusion as she looked at the guard. "You do know who I am, don't you?"
The guard swallowed hard enough for the group to hear the gulping sound before responding. "I'm sorry, Miss Schnee, but your father has forbidden you or anyone else to venture past this point."
Weiss seemed to think for a minute before she continued. She slowly walked up to the guard as he readjusted the grip on his gun. "You see, I've been looking around and taking the names of staff I've run into that were doing their jobs well." She walked around his side as he kept facing toward the other two people he saw as the majority of the threat. "I believe that you are doing a good job, not letting us go past here. It would be a shame if one of Schnee Corp's big secrets accidentally got out." The guard nodded and Weiss noticed the sheen of sweat gracing his forehead. He's nervous. Perfect. "What's your name?"
She ran a hand along his shoulder as she walked directly behind him and came around to his other side. "J-James Dixon." He stuttered as Weiss's hand trailed down the side of his neck.
"Very good, Mr. Dixon." Weiss said with a smile before she pinched a nerve in his neck, knocking him out instantly. He fell backward and Weiss jumped out of the way of getting crushed.
"Nice one." Ren nodded as he and Ruby stepped over the guards body. Weiss reached into her pocket and took a small crystal from her pocket and placed it inside the barrel of his gun. Ruby gave her a questioning look that Weiss simply ignored before continuing through the door he'd been guarding.
End Note:
This time around, I am going to try my best to eliminate one of the notes from each chapter, so this is where I advise you that this volume is rated M for intense violence and scenes making reference to or containing sexual content, among other less frequent adult themes. Consider yourself warned if I don't have a note at the beginning of one of those chapters.
If you have feedback on this or any other chapter, please don't hesitate to write a review or send me a PM. I only ask that you keep any criticism constructive for the sake of improving future chapters. In the words of my favourite character: "I'm not perfect... not yet."
And as always, I thank you for reading and I will be attempting to publish a new chapter every Monday or Tuesday.
