**IMPORTANT**
If you are wondering "Wait, when did I follow this story?" don't worry. This is Public Enemy Number One. I just changed the name to be more fitting and to make it stand out more. The old title was bland and generic and this new title I believe encapsulates the theme of this story more.
So don't unfollow or stop reading. It's the same story, just under a different name.
Anyways, enjoy.
The sound of a man yelling something caught the attention of the trio, still bickering near the entrance of the building.
"You guys hear that?" Yang asked, actively scanning the area where it came from.
"Yeah, I heard it." Weiss replied, her hand on her still holstered weapon.
"There!" Blake yelled and pointed up towards the roof near the corner of the building. As Weiss and Yang looked to where she was pointing, they saw an unidentified figure shove what appeared to be a man off the roof with force. The man let out a scream before his body hit the ground and crumbled like a poorly designed car in a crash. Just before impact, Blake turned away and shielded her eyes while Weiss and Yang continued to watch as the body smacked against the ground, letting out a bone chilling crack before slumping over to one side.
Before anyone else could react, Weiss unholstered her weapon and pointed it up at the spot where the unidentified person was last seen but couldn't see anyone or anything still there. As she continued to look around, Yang ran up towards the body in hopes of finding some life. As she ran, she brushed pasted Blake, who unshielded her eyes, cursed at herself for being scared, and followed Yang. Weiss soon followed, re-holstering her weapon.
Yang, being the first to leave, was the first to approach the body and as shocked at what she saw. It wasn't that the body was lifeless, it was that the lifeless body was that of Cardin. She cringed a little and covered her mouth as blood flowed out of his open mouth and nose, his body looking like a crumpled can. Blake was next to arrive and she too cringed, but not as much before bowing her head. Weiss, arriving last, just stared at the body of her friend before her.
Blake, being the leader, finally broke the silence. "Well, there's nothing we can do for him now. I'll make the call back to headquarters for body removal and we can mark him off the list." Blake pulled out her phone and a few taps later, a dinging noise was heard on all their phones as Blake marked off Cardin name from the list.
"We should probably get going. Cops might have heard that scream and could be on their way by now." Weiss said, turning away from the body
"Yeah." Yang said with a sigh before walking away. Blake was the last to leave as she had to take a few photos and make the call. Soon, she joined back up with Weiss and Yang at the side entrance.
"Okay, so remember, this is going to be difficult and could possibly take a day or two. This place is massive, and she could in any one of these rooms. We'll start on the first floor and work our way up. " Blake explained.
"Actually, I had a different idea." Yang interjected.
"Let's hear it." Blake said, intrigued.
"Let's start at the top and work our way down. That way in case of emergency or we need to escape quickly, if we're at the bottom, we can an abundance of ways to leave, versus at the top were we have to either jump or find a staircase. Plus, this person will most likely be higher up in the building. " Yang explained.
"I actually like that idea." Weiss said. "Change of pace."
"Alright. So we'll start on the third floor and work our way down. Any questions?" Blake asked. Weiss and Yang both shook their heads. "Alright, final check. Weapons?" They both nodded. "Check. Scrolls with the new app?" Yang and Weiss both pulled out their scrolls and a moment later, the both nodded. "Check. Vests?" They all hit the middle of the bullet proof vest they wore underneath their outfits. "Check. Okay. We're good to go." Blake took lead, followed by Weiss and Yang bringing up the rear. They entered from the side entrance and made their way down one of the hallways and soon found the nearest staircase. Once on the third floor, they began their slow and methodical sweep of the building.
Due to the nature of this criminal, just peeking their heads into each room wasn't an option. Instead, they had to check behind every desk, in every cabinet, and every nook and cranny for any sign of the fugitive. The interior of the building was set up as such; a long hallway down the middle with a classroom on either side of the hallway, one looking into the courtyard and the other looking out over the city. There were twenty-five classrooms on either side, fifty in total, and this only covered a quarter of the floor. For each side of the building, there were fifty classrooms, equaling two hundred per floor and roughly six hundred in the building. And this was just the classrooms. There were also janitor closets, bathrooms, teacher lounges, and storage rooms, all of which needed to be check. On the bottom floor, there were two cafeterias and a small swimming pool.
On top of all of that, there was the connecting walkways that had about forty classrooms per floor, one hundred and twenty in total, and the central pillar, which held all the administrative rooms and other various room, like the nurses office, front desk, and attendance. Finally, the principal's office, which was at the top of this pillar. Adding up all the rooms across the entire building, the team could guess there was anywhere between seven-hundred-and-fifty to eight-hundred rooms total, each one needing to be thoroughly checked.
To make the search go by as quickly yet thoroughly as possible, Team BWY devised a strategy. One person would stand out in the hallway as the other two checked the two rooms adjacent to each other. This search would only last about 45 seconds to a minute. Once one person completed their search, they would quietly leave the room and place a piece of pink ribbon over the door handle as a way to acknowledge that the room had already been searched. Once both of the ones searching tied off their ribbon on the handle, then they would move up towards the next set of rooms and the process would repeat. The person standing guard would rotate so every third room, the same person would stand guard. They repeated this process for the first fifty rooms, finding nothing and began to work on the next fifty.
As each searched, they each held their own specialized weapon. Weiss', of course, was her specially engraved six-shot silver revolver, which she held in her right hand. In her left hand, she held an equally as specialized knife. The blade was about five inches long and had the same type of patterns that the revolver had. She had received some hand-to-hand combat training, both from Yang and from her father, who believed a woman who knows self-defense is more dangerous than a man with a gun. Her arms were crossed so that her right arm/wrist was resting on her left arm/wrist, meaning that, if need be, she could quickly stab a nearby enemy instead of shooting.
Just like how Weiss' weapon matched her professional and elegant personality, Blake's did the same. Blake's personality matched that of an elite assassin. She was just as elegant and professional as Weiss, but just in a different sort of way. She could move more quickly than the other two on her team, and most importantly, more quietly. She had a gift of being very stealthy when the need arose, which is why her weapon of choice was a Glock 19 with a suppressor. At the moment, Blake had removed the suppressor, since she was with Yang and Weiss, and their weapons were not quiet. She did have it on her person however, just incase the need arose.
Yang's weapon was the exact opposite of Blake's. Where hers was quiet, Yang's was as loud as possible. Yang carried an Inland M37 Trench Gun with a custom paintjob of that of which replicated ones used during the Great War, alongside with flames painted on near the end of barrel. Yang had fallen in love with the gun after hearing stories of it being used in The Great War to clear out trenches, hence it's name. Before wanting to join the RATF, Yang wanted to be a boxer. She trained for nearly ten years in boxing before deciding to join the force. Using her already established hand to hand combat training to her advantage, she quickly gained a name as the person to go to for hand to hand training. So when it came time to close a weapon, Yang favored the Trench Gun as it allowed her to engage enemies at a close enough range to where her fists weren't out of the question.
After clearing nearly sixty rooms, Yang was getting a bit bored. They had found absolutely nothing yet, which was surprising to her. So, when it came time for her to stand guard, instead of doing her job, Yang instead pulled out her scroll and attempted to open up one of the few dating apps she had installed. She tried the first one but was immediately met with a No Service screen. Yang silently groaned, then proceeded to open the next, but was met with a similar message. Yang sighed and threw her head back. She closed that app as well and tried to open a third but was interrupted by Weiss.
"Ahem." Weiss said, condescendingly.
"What?" Yang replied, harshly with her scroll still in her hand.
"You're suppose to be standing guard! Not texting some random guy." Weiss said, pointing towards the scroll.
"1: It's not 'some random guy', it's a lot of random guys. I'm pretty popular." Yang said, throwing her hair back with a smirk.
"Your tits are popular." Blake with a snarky response, causing Yang smirk to fade.
"And 2: I don't have any reception in here. Place is a fucking dead zone." Yang said, pocketing the scroll.
"Weird. I swore I saw a cell tower next to the building." Blake said, a bit confused. "Maybe it's just this one spot."
"Let's pray it is." Yang said.
"Let's pray it isn't. Now let's go. I don't want to be here for forever." Weiss replied, walking past Yang. Yang shot Blake a look of 'can you believe this girl'. Blake rolled her eyes at Yang before following Weiss. "She's right, let's move." Yang sighed again before following the other two.
As the trio cleared the second set of rooms on the third floor, they repeated their room clearing strategy. At this particular moment, Yang was clearing the room facing the courtyard and Weiss was clearing the adjacent one with Blake standing guard in the hallway. As her teammate cleared the rooms, Blake noticed one of the doors a bit ajar down the hall. It wasn't enough to be completely obvious, but just enough for Blake to notice. It clearly stood out to her and caused a slight alarm not only because it's the only door that swung outwards, since all the other doors slid side to side, also interrupted the smooth flow of the wall since it stuck out a bit. She looked towards her teammates to see their current position. Both looked to be finishing up their sweeps and headed back to the door.
"Hey." She whispered quietly, grabbing the attention of both of them. She gave a head nod down the hall. Both Yang and Weiss quickly hurried back to their friend's side.
"What's up?" Weiss whispered.
"See that door down the hall, slightly ajar, right after the walkway connection?" Blake whispered back. She jestered towards the door. Both Weiss and Yang glanced down the hallway. It took them both a minute to spot what Blake was looking at.
"That's what you're acting all worried about?" Yang said at a normal volume, however it seemed loud given the location and all the previous conversation.
"Quiet! Look, it's probably nothing but just in case it's something or someone, let's quietly investigate it." Blake said snappy. Yang rolled her eyes but complied. The trio then proceeded towards the door, skipping over a few rooms in the process. As the got closer, the saw that there was an empty elevator shaft to their left. The elevator doors looked to be forced open from the outside. Curiously, Weiss notice signs of a struggle at the doors, including what seemed to be blood. But before she could open her mouth, Blake interrupted her.
"You two stay here and watch by back. I'll go investigate." Blake said, proceeding towards the door. Yang mocked Blake by pretending her hand was a mouth and opening and closing it while muttering Blake's command. This earned a punch in the shoulder from Weiss that caused Yang to grab her shoulder in pain and rub it. Weiss rolled her eyes, holding her weapon in one hand as Yang kept her weapon at her side, acting all pretentious.
Blake ignored Weiss' and Yang's bickering as she approached the door. Blake kept her eyes mainly on the door as she approached but occasionally glanced down the hallway, her weapon in both hands, ready to fire. By now she was about she was about 20 feet from her teammates. As she came closer, Blake heard the sounds of scurrying and things hitting the floor. Blake tensed up, preparing for a fight, although her rational side said it was probably a raccoon or opossum. Without breaking eye contact with the door, using her left hand, she slowly reached the grab the handle. Once she grabbed it, she took a deep breathe and swung it open with force. She quickly placed her left hand back on her gun and darted into the room. It appeared to be a small elevator maintenance room from what Blake could tell. She quickly scanned the back wall before looking up, her weapon ready to fire. For a brief second, Blake swore she saw a boot right above the door frame as she entered. However after looking up and scanning, Blake was surprised to see nothing, not even an animal.
Meanwhile, back in the hallway, Weiss and Yang watched with somewhat eager as Blake tactically approached the door. When she swung it open and enter swiftly, it elicited a snicker from Yang and an eye-roll from Weiss, however that could be projected at either Yang or Blake, probably both. Unbeknownst to them however, a large AC vent panel suddenly opened above and behind them. Right after it opened, a young woman, no taller than 5'7", dropped down right behind them. Neither of them heard the sound of her boots hitting the ground as she landed in such a way that minimalized it.
Once on the ground and steady, she stood upright and cleared her throat softly. Then, in the highest pitched voice she could manage, she simply said "Hiya!" with a big smile and her arms crossed behind her back. Yang and Weiss, extremely startled, swung around to see the young girl, standing innocently behind them. She was shorter than Yang but was roughly the same height as Weiss. The two quickly scanned the girl and both noticed the large weapon on her back. What happened next happened so fast, it seemed like a blur.
Before Yang or Weiss could properly react, the young girl pulled out a blunt edged scythe and swiped it, catching Weiss in the back of her legs and throwing her completely off balance. Before Weiss hit the ground, the young girl turned her attention towards Yang, who was in the process of pulling her weapon up. But before she could get her weapon fully up, the girl slammed the handle of the scythe into her cheek, knocking her too off balance. The girl then swung her legs and kicked Yang in the back of the legs, effectively throwing her to the ground as well. Blake, who was in the room when the girl first appeared, heard the commotion and quickly stepped out of the room. She saw Weiss already on the ground and Yang in the process of getting her legs kicked out from underneath her. Without hesitation, Blake pointer her weapon at the young girl and fired one shot. Unfortunately for Blake, the girl had just turned to look at Blake a split second before she fired and because of this, she was able to dodge the bullet by spinning to the left a full 360 degrees. However, when she was back to facing Blake, Blake noticed the Knight Armaments Company SR-25 that was once on her back now in her hands. And before Blake could move, the girl fired a single shot, striking Blake square in the chest, knocking her to the ground as well.
Upon seeing that she hit her mark, the young girl turned and headed for the elevator shaft, but not before seeing Weiss was about to stand back up. Without hesitation, the girl spun her gun around and smacked Weiss in the back of the head with the butt of her gun, causing her to drop to her stomach as she was knocked out. Looking back over her victims, she saw that all of them were either knocked out or too weak to fight. She holstered both her weapons and once again, in her high-pitched voice, she simply said "See ya later!" before headed towards the elevator shaft and jumping down it.
The trio lay on the ground for what seemed like an hour before Yang decided to stand up. Rubbing both her right cheek and the back of her head where it hit the ground, she crawled over to were Weiss lay face down.
"Weiss…" she weakly called out, shaking her teammates arm. Weiss replied with a groan and slowly but surely, began to roll over and sit up.
"What happened?" Weiss asked, rubbing the back of her head.
"We got fucking ambushed." Yang said, angerly as she reached for her shotgun.
"By that little girl?" Weiss asked, reaching for her weapons as well, still rubbing the back of her head.
"I think that little girl is our suspect." Yang said, using the wall as a support to stand up.
"She looked 15. There's no way she's our suspect." Weiss replied, grabbing her gun and holstering it.
"Well then, who just fucked us up then?" Yang replied scornfully.
"Well, that girl did but I don't think…" Weiss began, backtracking her statement.
Yang, hunched over, rolled her eyes and lowered her head. She took a few deep breathe before glancing over towards Blake. "Blake?" She called out, sounding worried. Weiss also looked over at her leader, who lay motionless on the floor. "Blake!" Yang called out again, but still no response. "Shit!" Yang cursed, dropping her weapon and began to make her way over to Blake. She was by no means graceful, stumbling a few times. But soon made her way over to Blake.
"Blake! You okay?" Yang said, sounding ever more worried than before. Yang looked down at her chest and noticed a small tear in her shirt, the exact size of a bullet hole.
"Oh no. Please no." Yang said, her voice cracking a bit. She quickly ripped off her top and saw a deep indentation of a bullet on her vest. Yang let out a sigh of relief as it appeared the vest had stopped the bullet, and a few seconds later, Blake coughed awake, groaning loudly.
"Am I dead?" Blake said, her voice weak.
"I sure hope not. It looks like your vest stopped the bullet. Mind if I take it off?" Yang asked. By this point, Weiss had made her way over and was now kneeling beside Blake.
"I got it." Blake replied, removing both her now ripped overshirt and then vest, the only thing remaining was her under shirt and bra. Slowly but surely, as her chest was still in pain, she pulled her undershirt up until, resting right under her left boob, was a large bruise. Blake looked down at the bruise and then threw her head back with a smile. "That's gonna hurt tomorrow."
"Glad to see you're fine. Now let's talk about what just happened." Weiss said.
"What do you mean? We already know what happened. We got jumped by a little girl who apparently knows how to use a fucking scythe and a SR-25." Yang replied.
"But that's the thing. From what I could tell, that scythe was blunt edged and if you weren't wearing that armor, it would have ripped through your chest and destroy any organs in its path." Weiss said.
"So you're saying that this vest was the only thing that saved my life?" Blake asked.
"Yes. Probably was using standard ammunition and not armor-piercing rounds." Weiss said, commanding the other two to scour the floor for anything rubber. It wasn't long before they found pieces of a rubber bullet scattered about. "See? It acted like a hollow point and expanded on impact. If you weren't wearing that vest, then you would have been killed."
"I thought rubber bullet require a specialized chamber?" Yang asked.
"Certain weapons and types of rubber bullets, yes. But you can configure a standardized chamber to fire rubber bullets. Just takes a while to perfect." Weiss explained.
"So not only do we have an elite assassin of sorts, we also have a gun nut who knows how to custom build and configure rifle chambers to fire specialized bullets?" Yang asked.
"Yes to both. And she probably knows how to craft the bullets themselves because I don't know of anyone who makes rubber bullets for a Barrett." Weiss replied.
"We're fucked." Yang said, concerned.
"Come on you two, let's find a place to rest." Blake said, beginning to stand up and leave, but not before discarding her destroyed overshirt. Weiss and Yang followed suit and the three made their way into one of the corner rooms in the building, ignoring the classrooms since they were too weak to fight.
In every corner of the building lay a large corner room. Most were teachers lounges with a few being science labs and large media rooms. As the three made their way into the room, they found it to be a science lab, with large countertop like tables and loads of science equipment. Since the majority of the tables were raised, stools were the common seating accommodations.
Each of the three grabbed a stool and made their way to a centralized table. They all took a moment to relax and recuperate before Yang broke the silence.
"So, that's our target?" She asked.
"I mean, if she isn't, then who is?" Weiss replied.
"Yeah, but she looked so young." Blake remarked, examining the newly formed bruise on her chest.
"I got a good look at her. She looked to only be a few years younger than us. Maybe she had special training as a child?" Yang said.
"Maybe." Weiss said, pulling out her scroll.
"What are you doing?" Blake asked.
"Calling for help." Weiss replied, scrolling through her contacts.
"What do you mean 'help'? We're the last line of defense. If we can't do this, no one can." Yang said, sounding a bit agitated.
"Right. We are the last line defense. However, that doesn't mean we can't call in support. Think about it. Technically, this mission doesn't exist. So if we call for help, who's really going to know about it?" Weiss said, before finding the contact she was looking for.
"She's got a point. Technically, they can't punish us for something that didn't happen, nor any accomplices." Blake added, sounding a bit excited.
"Alright then, who's this person?" Yang asked.
Weiss held up a finger towards Yang. "I'll tell you once I can get ahold of him. I only got 1 bar in here." Weiss said, bringing the scroll up to her ear.
/
Loud pop music played through surround sound speakers spread across a decently sized room. The room housed a bunch of computer servers and other electronic equipment. In the middle of the room, there was a bunch of large computer screens arranged i grid on the wall. At the moment they all held a different image but could all be linked up into one big image should the need arise. In front of the monitors was a large white desk with a glowing keyboard and mouse, a smaller laptop, a scroll plugged into an aux cord and a large gathering of trash to one side, most of it being bags of chips.
Residing in front of the desk in an office rolling chair was a 28-year-old man, singing along to the words of the song like a 15-year-old girl. For the parts he didn't quite know yet, he just mumbled through that section until he got to another part he knew quite well. The whole time that this was happening, he was tapping along to the beat using a two pens. He tried to sing in the correct octave but using just ended up cracking his voice. He didn't mind thought, as he was the only person in the room and the surrounding area.
As the song neared the end, the music suddenly cut out, much to the man's surprise. It was very quickly replaced by a default ringtone that played at such a loud volume through the speakers that the man jumped and quickly unplugged the scroll. Once his ears stopped ringing, and without looking at the caller, he answered the scroll.
"RATF ITD, this is JA speaking, how can I direct your call tonight?" He said in a professional tone of voice.
"Cut it, Vomit Boy." The woman on the other end sounded a bit distorted.
"Wait, Weiss?" Jaune replied, sounding very surprised as he took the scroll away from his ear and looked at the caller. Sure enough, he was met with a somewhat disgruntled image of Weiss that Jaune may or may not have taken without her consent. "How are you? It's been so long since we talked… I mean, how can I help you?" Jaune said, changing his tone of voice from excited to serious, trying to impress Weiss.
Jaune Arc, or Vomit Boy as he was commonly known as through the RATF due to a mishap on the first day, was the leading IT guy at the RATF. He earned this position after scoring 'lower than average' on field test, where he was originally assigned to be. This led to being put in an unsatisfactory team that overall did poorly when it came time for evaluation. However, after a chance opportunity during a mission, he was able to prove his ability to not only work advanced tech equipment but also able to hack into said equipment. It was from that moment on that the RATF shifted his learning from field work to IT work and working with the latest tech. However, because of the late change-over, he graduated a year behind everyone else and for a while lost contact with his former friends. However, after most of them retired or simply quit, he was able to reconnect with a lot of them including Weiss, Blake, and Yang.
"Wait, you called Jaune?!" Jaune her what sounded like Yang's voice on the other side of the call. She too sounded a distorted and farther away from the mic.
"Is that Yang? Wait, where are you?" Jaune said, confused at what he was hearing.
"Jaune, this is going to sound weird, but I'm on mission with Blake and Yang and we kinda need your help." Weiss said, her voice almost cutting out at times.
"You're on mission? I can barely hear you talking. Where are you?" Jaune asked, a bit worried by the sudden call.
"We're at the old abandoned school downtown near the river." Weiss replied.
"Where is that? I can still barely hear you." Jaune replied.
"Just use that spyware shit the RATF uses to track my location." Weiss practically yelled through the call.
"Hey, it's called Smrt City." Jaune yelled back. "Okay, it's technically spyware." Jaune said after a brief pause.
Roughly 20 years ago, in an attempt the RATF did to make it easier to find suspected terrorists, they were able to persuade Vale city council into letting them install something they called Smrt City. What is did was, after installation on very cell tower within city limits, was it made every phone number into a trackable location, similar to GPS. Phone numbers are embedded into a scroll's data, making the number non-transferable. This meant that as long as the phone was on, the RATF could use nearby cell towers to triangulate a person's suspected location. It's main feature over traditional GPS, and the feature that won over the city council, was that even if location was turned off, the number could still be tracked since that was linked to the phone's hard data and something the user couldn't simply 'turn off'.
When the announcement was first made, it was, of course, met with a lot of criticism. People compared it to that of spyware, which it technically was since you couldn't disable tracking and once your location was found, additional Smrt City features could tell you the exact location, the address of the scroll, and additional information about the area or place it resided in like number of occupants in a house and median income of an area and even the level of cell connection in a specific area. However, after the number of terrorist caught jumped nearly 500% in the first year, most people calmed down and ever since, the number of terrorist acts upon Vale is virtually zero.
He moved his chair over towards the monitors and soon all the screens changed to make it seem to form once large screen. Jaune typed in a username and password and was soon met with a large overhead view of Vale. Jaune typed in Weiss' phone number and was soon able to track her to her exact location, down to the inch.
"Alright, I got you on the map. Huh, that's weird." Jaune stated, sounding confused.
"What's up?" Weiss said into her scroll on the other side of the line. By this point, Yang and Blake were somewhat crowded around Weiss, trying to hear what Jaune was saying.
"It looks like you guys are in a large dead zone." Jaune voice was gravely and hard to understand.
"Well no shit. This building is massive. Of course there's going to be a few dead areas." Weiss said, sounding annoyed by the information she already knew.
"No, dead is in something to blocking the signal. You guys should have great reception throughout the building. But from what I'm seeing, it looks like someone has placed jammers throughout the building to block all cell signals. The only places you guys can get signal are at the corners and I'm seeing a few small gaps in the jammers range spread throughout the building." Jaune said.
"Jaune you cut out a few times there, what did you say?" Weiss asked after a brief moment of silence.
Jaune sighed. "Move towards you left, towards the outside wall of the building." Jaune said, his voice still cutting out. Weiss obliged and moved the scroll towards the large window looking out over the city. "Like this?" Weiss asked, placing the scroll on the window sill and turning on speaker mode so Yang and Blake could hear.
"Much better. I can hear you a lot better now. How's it on your end?" Jaune asked.
"Better, thanks." Weiss said. "Now back to the mission at hand."
"Right. First question: Why are you guys on a mission?!" Jaune asked suddenly.
"Okay, everything you're about to hear you can't, and I repeat, CANNOT, tell anyone about. Do you understand, Arc?" Weiss said sternly.
"Yes ma'am." Jaune said confidently, knowing that Weiss only called him Arc when it was serious.
"Okay then. We are trying to track down and eliminate someone called Red. You should have a file on them. It was created yesterday and should be blank except for a few notes at the bottom. Can you find that file?" Weiss asked.
"Give me a second." Jaune replied. The trio could hear the sound of a mechanical keys on a keyboard being hit. "Got it."
"Okay. Now, this person has at least two confirmed kills, but that number could be as high as thirteen, maybe even higher. She has killed two VIB agents and one RATF agent." Weiss explained.
"Wait, who died from the RATF?" Jaune asked.
"Cardin. She pushed him off the roof when we first got here as a warning I guess. Died on impact." Weiss solemnly explained. "I know you two didn't get along well."
"Yeah. Still, send my condolences to his family. What about his teammates?" Jaune asked.
"MIA. But they're believed to be dead. We haven't found their bodies so we're still holding out hope." Weiss explained.
"Alright. How are you guys holding out so far?" Jaune asked.
"Well…" Weiss trailed off.
"We just got our asses kicked to put it lightly." Yang interjected.
"Really?" Jaune sounded surprised.
"Yeah. She caught us off guard and completed fucked us up." This time it was Blake that spoke up.
"Did you happen it get a good look at her?" Jaune asked.
"Yeah. I got a really good look at her when she just appeared behind me and Weiss!" Yang exclaimed, still a bit shaken up from the jump scare.
"Well can you tell me what she looked like? I can use the description to fill out her file and to cross reference it with all known Vale terrorist to see if we get a hit." Jaune said.
"Oh yeah sure. Um, well for starters, she was female." Yang began.
"Yeah I got that much already. What about appearance? Facial features, eye color, hair color, height, that shit." Jaune interrupted.
"I was getting there Vomit Boy." Yang said. She could hear him sigh over the call, which made her smirk a bit. "She stood about Weiss' height. 5'7", maybe 5'8". She looked to be a few years younger, maybe 25 or 26." Yang explained.
"A lot of maybe's." Jaune said, sound unconfident in Yang.
"Hey listen! I was trying to see if she had a weapon, not trying to see if she was fuckable!" Yang said in a snappy voice.
"I mean, was she?" Jaune asked, sounding intrigued. This time it was Yang who was the one sighing. "Anyways, 5'8", 26-years-old. Her hair was black, but I thought I saw some red frosted tips. Oh, and her eyes, looked silver." Yang continued.
"Silver eyes?" Jaune asked.
"I believe so." Yang said. "Were her eyes silver, Weiss?" Yang asked, turning her attention to Weiss.
"Yeah, actually, now that you mention it." Weiss said, thinking back to just before the fight.
"Yeah. Silver eyes." Yang said, turning back to the call.
"Okay then." Jaune said, typing away at his keyboard. "Well, out of 30,000 suspected and accused terrorists in all of Vale, I have zero matches." Jaune said, unenthusiastically. All three of the girls in the room let out a disappointed sigh upon receiving the news. "I put all her information on her file. I'm just missing the name."
Just then, a loud bang on the door caused the three girls to jump and pull out their weapons. No one could be seen out through the windows on the door and surrounding it. After about 10 seconds of silence, Blake began to approach the door. Cautiously, she made her way over to the door, upon reaching it, she slid it open with force. This time, Yang remained silent and professional, keeping her weapon trained towards the door.
Blake quickly scanned the hallway in all directions but saw nothing and no one. She sighed and lowered her weapon and grabbed the handle to the door. However, instead of grabbing the metal handle, she instead grabbed a folded piece of paper tapped to the handle. She grabbed the paper and ripped it from its tapped location and closed the door.
She made her way over to the other two girls and placed the piece of paper on the table and unfolded it. It had a short message written in somewhat decent looking handwriting. It read simply:
That was your one and only warning. Leave now and I promise I won't
hurt you anymore. However, if you decide to stay like the rest of them,
then I can't guarantee you'll make it out alive. So leave. I don't want
to hurt anyone else. This doesn't involve you.
~ RR
The three girls looked at each other for a brief moment before it was Jaune that broke the silence.
"Is everyone okay? I heard a bang and then you guys went quiet." He said.
"We're fine." Blake said. "And we got some initials for you. 'RR'. Most likely first and last initials." Blake explained.
"R and R. Got it. Hey, I got a question for you guys?" Jaune asked.
"What's up?" Blake replied.
"Do we know how long this person has been in this location?" Jaune questioned.
"Well, disappearances started eight months ago so probably around that long. Why?" Blake asked.
"I'm looking at satellite images of this place from a week ago and I'm seeing nothing in the way of any type of greenery on the roof or any attempted at gardening at all. While I could be likely that's all being housed in one of the rooms inside, people usually building greenhouses on the roof, so plants can grow faster. And like I said, there's nothing on the roof. Which means they have to be buying food from somewhere and I see a gas station/convenience store right across the street. So here's my plan. I'm going to call that place to see if they recognize someone matching the description you guys gave me. I text you guys when I'm done." Jaune explained.
"That actually sounds like a good idea." Weiss said.
"Yeah. Good job, Jaune." Yang said.
"Thanks, guys. Text you in a bit. Stay safe. Don't die." Jaune said before the call went dead.
"Alright team, based on what we just experienced, we got what appears to be an elite assassin on our hands. So that means we need to be hyper aware at all times. So no more half assed searches, no more just standing around, and no more texting guys on dating apps." Blake said, glaring towards Yang.
"I got it." Yang said, rolling her eyes.
"Okay then, let's get moving. By my calculations, we are only roughly 10% done with the search of the building. So let's get back to work." And with that, the trio picked up their weapons, made their way to the door, and began clearing rooms one by one again.
