Chapter 3

One Month Later

Ruby poured the Mistralian Slammer into a glass and placed it on the bar as a regular sat down, "Here you go, Duke."

After sliding Duke's card, opening a tab, and returning it, Ruby turned back to the conversation she'd been having with the scheduled bartender for the night, Charlotte "You're joking, right? Junior, seriously, asked you out on a date? Like not in a joking manner?"

Charlotte turned away from the customer she'd just finished serving and shrugged, before going on to the next one, "That was my reaction too. Your first comment is word for word the same as mine was."

Ruby shook her head, "How has he not realized that you're gay yet?"

Charlotte was seven years older than Ruby and had been working for Junior for almost as long, and in those seven years she had not been discrete in her preferences. She had waist length auburn hair, green eyes, and auburn cat ears on the top of her head. It was common for Charlotte to flirt with any girl who came by the bar, – even if she never acted on any of them, she'd been in a loving relationship with her girlfriend since the two had started their first year of secondary school, and been friends with her for years before that. It was also common for Charlotte to be dropped off at the bar by her girlfriend when she came into work.

Then again, Junior has never been that observant when it came to a person's sexuality, Ruby should know she'd had several girlfriends – two of them for extended periods of time – in the past and Junior had still been floored when the fact came up in conversation a few years ago.

A fifteen year old Ruby flung open the door to her and Junior's apartment and stormed in.

When the door handle collided with the wall, the sounds of pots being rattled, a gasp of pain, and shortly after what sounded like a "Fuck!", and chuckling could be heard from the kitchen. A few seconds later Junior's head popped out of the door to the kitchen and looked around before catching sight of Ruby, who by now had draped herself across an armchair with her legs over one arm and her head lying on the other.

Junior pushed through the doorway, wiping his hands on the apron he was wearing, and was followed shortly after by Roman. Junior sat on the couch in the apartment while Roman leaned against the side of Ruby's chair and looked down at her.

Ruby was focused on her thoughts but still managed to catch the tail end of what seemed to be a silent argument between Junior and Roman. When she did the two quickly ended it.

"So Red, what's bothering you?" Roman drawled, looking for all the world as if he couldn't care less as he examined his cuticles.

Ruby shot up in her seat and glared at the bowler hat wearing criminal, "My problem is that I just caught my girlfriend cheating on me...with a guy no less!"

Roman stood up and looked at Ruby an expression of real interest, and what could possibly be glee on his face. Roman stepped forward and shooed Junior further down the couch before sitting on the edge and leaning towards the teenager, his arms on his knees, "Ooh, teenager drama. Do tell."

The redhead sighed, and shook her head, her mood noticeably lighter after seeing Roman's clear interest in her gossip – then again, Roman did watch soap operas religiously and his favorite show was The Old and The Lethargic so it wasn't like it was surprising, "So I've been going out with a girl named Olivia for the past couple months and after I finished up my training early today, I decided to go over and see if she wanted to go see a movie or something. Along the way, I decided to make a whole romantic date out of it. I stopped by a florist, and picked up a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates. I hurried over having already decided to take her out to an Atlesian restaurant after the movie. When I got to her parent's apartment, I slipped into the building behind a couple so I could surprise her and everything. I go up the stairs, I find her apartment, and I knock. A couple seconds later the door opens to show Olivia with her hair all mussed up, and her clothes askew. I'm confused of course but I don't wait and start to ask her if she wanted to go out for a movie and dinner, and the next thing I know some love struck looking boy walks up behind her and wraps his arms around her! The worst part of it all is that she then looked at me and told me that, and I'm quoting here, 'thanks for helping me, but we're through. I just wanted to experiment for a bit to make sure I wasn't gay.' The nerve of the girl!"

Roman sat back on the couch, clutching his stomach, and Ruby had no way to describe what he did other than as chortling.

Ruby's eyes widened at Roman's reaction, "What is so funny, Candlestick?!"

The criminal sat up, wiping his eyes as he did so, "One, never call me Candlestick again. Two, what's so funny is that you are taking this so seriously. I mean honestly, you've been going out for what two months? It's not like you have real feelings for her, right?"

"Well, no but that –"

"It does too matter! Now, you clearly haven't been crying. Now let me ask you this, are you sad because she cheated on you, or are you angry because she cheated on you?"

"Mostly angry, but –"

"Are you more angry because she hurt you, or because she had the nerve to cheat on you?"

"I-I-I- Junior! What do you think?!" For the first time since starting to talk to Roman, Ruby looked at Junior.

Junior's face was, to say the least, slack jawed. His eyes were glazed over and he was staring off into nothingness as if finally realizing something, and was looking over memories finding clues that he had missed in the past.

Roman snapped his fingers in front of Junior's face, snapping him out of whatever was wrong with him.

The broker shook his head, and looked at Ruby, what came out of his mouth next caused Ruby to face palm, and Roman to, literally, cackle with glee. "Ruby, you're gay?"

The teenager"s arms shot out in a bewildered gesture, "Out of all of that, what you got was that I'm gay? Junior, I've had three girlfriends by this point! How did you not know!"

Ruby took three things out of that situation. 1) Junior was an oblivious idiot, hence her ringtone for him. 2) Her and Roman had very different views on matters of the heart. She was a firm believer that one should never play with another person's heart no matter the situation, while Roman was callous about them. And 3) Ruby wasn't going to have another girlfriend until she was older and both she and they were a little more mature. If Ruby saw Winter again she would try to change it, although she did have a nagging feeling that she wouldn't, but to this day she hadn't had another since what she called the Olivia Incident.

The driver continued working for another half hour or so, making sure to log all of the tabs she opened in under Charlotte's name to make sure she got the tips, until she saw Junior gesturing for her from the stairs in the back.

The redhead handed the drink she'd just finished making to a customer before letting Charlotte know she was leaving, and heading back towards Roman.

Ruby wiped her hands on her jeans as she approached him, "What's up, J-man?"

Junior sighed, "Really? J-man? You give the worst nicknames ever, you realize that right? Remember the one you tried to give Roman, what was it again Candlewick or something like that?"

The teenager snapped him with the towel she had on her shoulder, "Shut up. First of all, it was Candlestick, not Candlewick. Second of all, you have no right to speak of embarrassing things, Mr. Let's-Ask-The-Blatant-Lesbian-In-A-Loving-And-Long-Lasting-Relationship out on a date."

"See, that's what I was talking about horrible at naming things," Junior shot back, otherwise completely ignoring Ruby's barb. "Your names are either horribly stupid or they're horrendously long. Anyways, I didn't call you over here to trade jabs with you. Your scroll's been going off up in the apartment for the past ten minutes. Go answer it or I'm going to smash it with a hammer."

"Ha! As if you could, I don't believe for a second you own one. Remember that time you tried to hang a painting in your apartment and had to ask Alexander, the bartender at the time, to bring tools and do it, because you didn't know how to do it or have the necessary things to do it with?" Ruby said as she jogged past him.

The broker didn't bother responding, he just grabbed the towel off her shoulder and smacked her in the back with it.

The redhead threw her head back and laughed as she went up the stairs, "Junior!"

"What?"

"Just thought you should know in case you didn't get the message last night, Charlotte's a lesbian...and you also hit like a girl!"

"Quiet, She-Demon!"

Ruby opened the door to Junior's apartment and strode in still chuckling. Picking up her scroll, she saw she had missed quite a few calls, and as she went to check who they were from, she got another one. Glancing at the caller ID, she answered, "What's up, Cinder?"

"Where were you?"

"Uhh, bartending while I talked to a friend. Could you sound anymore like a possessive girlfriend? Because if that's how you're going to act, we really need to rework the terms of our relationship. I expect to get the benefits of a romantic relationship if I'm going to be dealing with the cons of one."

The driver could hear Cinder sigh on the other side of the scroll, "Sorry. You said if I'm in your area and I need something to call, correct?"

"Yeeeeah, but I was just joking if -"

"No, it's nothing like that. I'm coming to Vale for about a day to iron out the details of my deal with the White Fang, and my employer is sending two subordinates with me."

"Okay, what do you need?"

"I don't have full confidence that the two could keep me safe were it to come to a fight."

"So you need me to pick you up and drive you to the meeting?"

"No. There is an agreed upon limit of two people other than the representative of the two parties."

"Ah. You don't trust them to hold to that agreement?"

"No, as a result I need you to go to the meeting, preferably disguised, and be another set of eyes and another weapon if one is needed."

"I can do that, easily. But first, there's the small matter of a fee, and when all of this is going down."

Ruby strolled into Junior's bar a couple days later. She still had a little bit until the actual meeting, and was planning on using that time to scout out the bar and find a place to set up where she would be able to see the meeting, as well as the door.

Ruby walked over to the bar and stopped opposite of Charlotte, "'Ello 'Ello, it's been quite awhile hasn't it Charla-dear?"

The bartender looked up from the counter she had been wiping and shot Ruby a beaming grin, "Viola? Is that really you? Where have you been lately?"

The not-so-red-redhead grinned back and raised her arms as if presenting herself to an audience, "The one and only. Finally managed to work my way back here after I passed out on a party yacht in Patch and woke up on some forsaken docks in some backwater in Atlas."

"Viola" was an alias that Ruby would take on at some points when she needed to appear in disguise without anyone actually noticing that she was disguised. Viola had made a small name for herself during her brief residence in Vale for being at the center of every party and when that party broke up or a fight happened it was likely that Viola was either responsible, in some way probably by egging people on, or in the center of it herself. After staying in Vale for six months, Viola packed up and left. Since then she'd made several trips to Vale claiming that she was "on a circuit", jumping from city to city to sample the differences in culture and society.

Viola was usually seen in a white t-shirt, under a leather jacket that had metal studs down the outside of the sleeves, a pair of black jeans, and converse shoes. Viola had royal purple hair, and usually had her eyebrow "pierced", this time it was a clip on eyebrow ring with a diamond on it, with a matching lip ring. To top it all off was the fact that she always had some temporary face tattoo, this time it was an overhead view of a dragon spreading its wings.

To ensure that no one recognized her, Ruby had also hired someone to make her a realistic set of prosthetic face parts to give her a completely different facial structure after some careful makeup and spoke with an accent.

Charlotte, and Junior were the only two who knew that Viola also happened to be Ruby. Charlotte leaned against the bartop, and smiled at the purple haired girl, "So what will it be tonight, 7&7, whiskey sour, what?"

"Actually, I just want a Rum and Coke for tonight, Charla-dear. I'm just relaxing tonight."

"Uh-huh, we'll see how long that lasts. I give you thirty minutes before you hear of a party that catches your attention and you're out the door." The bartender slid Ruby's drink, which was really just a coke that Charlotte had used some sleight of hand to make in order to give the appearance of adding the Rum to.

"Haha, I'll talk to you later sweetheart," the disguised girl turned and scanned the bar before heading towards the stairs on the side that lead up to the second floor of the bar. After getting to the second floor, Ruby looked around at all of the tables that were on the upper floor. It wasn't long before the former-redhead found both of the things she was looking for.

Ruby sauntered over to a table in a corner that overlooked the dance floor, as well as the door. Sitting at the table was a girl, the driver wouldn't have put her at more than two years older than Ruby herself. She had on heeled black boots, purple stockings that turned to black as they went up her legs and had what was likely her personal emblem, black ribbons on each arm, a separate black sleeve that had a silver armband around her upper left arm, a white sleeveless undershirt with a black vest with coattails and only one button over it, and matching white shorts, and to finish it off was a black bow on her head.

The girl had long black hair, an olive complexion, and amber eyes that were upturned at the outside, and reminded the driver of Cinder.

The black haired girl was currently reading a book, judging by what Ruby could see of the cover was an old Vacuan tale about a boy who got lost in the desert and was rescued by a tribe of nomads.

Ruby stopped beside the table and just stood there, after a moment the girl looked up at Ruby.

Ruby nodded at one of the empty chairs around the table, "Mind if I sit there?"

The girl looked at Ruby for a few more seconds, shrugged, and went back to her book.

After pulling out a chair, and sitting down, the former-redhead drew out her scroll and started to pretend to play a game on it while nursing her drink. In reality though the driver was watching the other girl. After a few minutes, Ruby's first suspicion was proven correct. The girl was a faunus, something made clear by the fact that every now and then her bow would twitch like a pair of cat ears. A little later Ruby saw the other girl look over the top of her book and tense up.

Following the girl's gaze Ruby saw Cinder and a dark skinned girl with green hair and red eyes, and a pale boy with gray hair and matching eyes, walk in and stalk over to a table at which sat a bull faunus in a black outfit with brown and red hair wearing a Grimm mask.

Ruby chuckled to herself, Oh the things Junior can get away with.

The truth was Junior was a neutral party in a society embroiled in so many different types of conflicts. From conflicts like those between business rivals to that between the criminal organizations and those who opposed them. Junior claimed every building within a three block radius of the bar as under his protection – although he never demanded protection money from the property owners, in reality it was more of a formality than anything else-, and it was well known that if anyone broached the peace within that area, hell would come down on them and for the most part it was a silent agreement followed by everyone. The criminals followed it because it gave them a place that they could meet without fear of someone breaking any truce that may be in action and a place to just cool down. The hunters and law enforcement allowed it because it created a place they didn't have to worry about patrolling. And everyone abided by it because no one could afford to lose access to Junior's wealth of information. Junior was just as vital to those on the right side of the law for providing them with information about criminals and their activities as he was to the criminals for providing them with information on various things. Of course everything came at a price.

Ruby continued to watch the girl. Since Cinder's arrival, the girl had become markedly more tense and was clearly only pretending to read. Her eyes, meanwhile, were fixated on the meeting currently going on.

Ruby closed out of the game she had been pretending to play and typed out a message on it before sliding it across the table in front of the other girl and tapping on the table to get her attention.

The girl looked down at the scroll, read what it said, and, much to Ruby's disbelief, tensed up even more. The girl glanced from the scroll to Ruby to the meeting on the ground floor and back to Ruby. She quickly typed something out on it and slid it back to Ruby before "returning" to her book, and pointedly turning a page.

Ruby looked at the message and shook her head.

V: If you're going to pretend to read, you should at least turn the page now and then.

B: Mind your own business.

The driver looked up at the girl whose name she assumed started with a B, "You know, Cinder likely won't be pleased when she hears that your boss didn't keep to the agreement."

B glared at Ruby for a second before returning to watching the meeting.

"So what's up with the bow? Why hide who you are like you're ashamed of being a Faunus?"

And...there was the glare again, "I'm not ashamed of being a Faunus."

Ruby leaned forward and set her arms on the table when she spoke next she made sure to carefully enunciate every syllable, "Then why wear the bow?"

B slammed her book on the table, "Because I don't want to be judged for what I am but for who I am!"

Ruby leaned back in her seat and scratched the side of her nose, "No, no, you're right. People shouldn't treat you badly for being a faunus, they should just treat you badly for being a criminal and soon to be terrorist who is part of an organization that has made several attempts on the lives of the family members of a man merely because his company treats the people who work there of their own accord poorly. Meanwhile you completely ignore the fact that the man whose family you are targeting is only part of the problem and in fact has done much to change the company from what it used to be under his father's control."

B's eyes had widened at the beginning, "What do you mean soon to be terrorist?"

Ruby's eyes narrowed, "You don't know? Cinder and your boss are down there arranging for you to steal a trainload of Schnee dust and various other nefarious schemes all of which include deaths of innocents and/or destruction of private property and you don't know?"

The black haired girl shook her head. The denial in her eyes couldn't have been more obvious, "No, that's...you're wrong. Adam would never work for a human, and besides we don't do things like that. Anyways how do you know?"

The drivers eyes flitted over to where the meeting was being held. Ruby stood up, and looked at B, "I know a lot of things. I personally know several of the Schnees. I know what's being discussed in that meeting down there. I know what Cinder is planning on having the White Fang do for her and extrapolating from what I heard that your boss, Adam I suppose,.wants I know that the he is planning on making big changes in how the White Fang operates. Judging from your reaction, I know you don't agree with what the White Fang is about to do and from the way you were holding yourself when I first saw you, you've probably already had problems with what they were already doing recently. I also know that your excuse is bullnanny. You may claim that you want people to judge you for who you are, not what you are. The truth is your faunus heritage is part of who you are. It's had just as much a part in forming who you are, as anything else. Hiding that, is not only a denial of who you are but you can't truly claim to be a supporter of Faunus Rights if you can't even bring yourself to admit that you are a faunus."

Ruby reached over and grabbed B's scroll off the table and then typed out the address for one of Ruby's apartments, "I know you're confused and conflicted right now but when the time comes, drop by."

Ruby turned and left seeing as how the meeting had been ending when she stood up.

As she was heading out the door, she nodded at Charlotte.

Charlotte nodded back..

The redhead-turned-purplehead spun and cupped her hands around her mouth, "Sorry Charla, but it took a bit longer than you guessed. Be a dear and close out my tab, would you?" Ruby turned back forward, and raised her fist as if in victory, "And off to Vacuo I go!"

Eight Days Later

Knock-knock-knock

Ruby stood up and set her bowl of popcorn on the table, before pausing the current episode of Nurse Who and walking over to her door clad in sky blue pajama pants covered in rubber ducks, and a shirt that went halfway down her thighs that showed a red phone booth with the words "It's smaller on the outside" on it.

Ruby peered through her peephole, and then opened the door. On the other side was the girl from the bar. She was wearing the same outfit from before but this time she also had what looked to Ruby to be a Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe on her back.

Ruby had decided to, after ruminating on it, stay in the apartment that she had given B the address to rather than just going over to check if the girl had stopped by or not every day and leaving the door unlocked.

B looked at Ruby, "My name is Blake, and I need a place to stay."

A/N: So there's that chapter. Sorry this one was late as well. Remember last chapter how I said that I had been busy? Well, I was busy that week, last week, and this week because my brother and his wife were moving and I was helping them move and spending some time with them since them and my mom are like the only people that I actually like in my family. Yay, horrible families!

Thanks to everyone who favorited and followed, and I forgot to say it last chapter so thanks to Drednaught for reviewing.

Thanks to Sienim1es for pointing out my mistake, last chapter, where I accidentally had Winter calling Ruby by her proper name in the car before she knew it, it is now fixed. Sienim, I would have thanked you in a PM as well, but you have to be a member for me to reply to your review. If anyone else catches errors like that please let me know. I would also like to thank A Simple Cup for pointing out an identical instance during Ruby and Winter's dance at the gala. The two of them saved me from having to catch those mistakes while I was editing the prologue and following chapters. And by editing, I only meant that I was fixing some grammar errors and typos. Nothing was actually changed in the chapters themselves.