Chapter 3: Once Four, Now Three
Mining Town Providence, Southern Vale
11:15 am
Dante and the limping Weiss walked into the AMCP's communications room, where they were being hailed on all channels by Winter, who was demanding a place to land...
" Booker, what the hell is going on?" Dante asked.
" We've got an Aletian Specialist demanding clearance to land here." Booker, the comms officer explained.
" That's my sister." Weiss said.
" Allow her clearance to land on the second platform." Dante ordered.
Winter's airship was eventually given clearance to land at the AMCP's second platform, so Dante and Weiss proceeded to the roof to meet with her. The Airship landed the platform, and Winter stepped off the airship with her sword in hand, in case of any resistance due to her presence in a quarantined town. But she quickly sheathed it and ran up and hugged her younger sister, crying tears of joy of the fact her sister was alive. But Weiss was on the brink of crying, in which Winter immediately took notice...
" What's wrong sister?" Winter asked.
" (Voice on the verge of breaking) It's Ruby." Weiss said, tears now welling in her eyes.
Winter immediately hugged her sister as she had started to cry, and turned her head to Dante and began to speak...
" What happened?" She asked.
" It'll be better if you follow me." Dante said.
He lead the two sisters out of the AMCP to the Medical Tents, and Winter saw everything that WHITECROSS had been doing for the people of Providence. Infected individuals were being subdued by WHITECROSS shock troops, doctors and specialists were distributing antibiotics to residents, and miner foremen were discussing blueprints of the mine with WHITECROSS surveyors. They arrived in the medical tents, passing by a crying Yang...
" Where's her teammate, Blake?" Winter asked.
" Miss Belladonna has been isolated as she has been confirmed to have been infected with GRV." Dante explained.
" GRV?" Winter said.
" It's the virus they've been trying to stop." Weiss explained.
" Oh." Winter responded.
They arrived at the surgical area of the tents, in which Dante pulled the curtain aside. Winter was shocked and Weiss was horrified, Ruby laid motionless on a gurney, hooked up to life support machines and a bandage wrapped around her torso that was covered by a big spot of crimson.
" The doctors did everything they could, but she needs to get to a hospital." Dante said.
Winter looked down at Weiss, who was scared for her teammate. But this wasn't ordinary fear that Winter saw in her younger sister's eyes, she saw a concern that ran deeper than most, it was concern and a fear of regret if something took Ruby from her. She immediately looked up to Dante...
" Get her ready to be moved, I'll be taking her, Weiss, and Yang to the hospital ." Winter said.
" Agreed, I'll have the doctors prep her to be mobile." Dante said.
They explained the situation to Yang, and she agreed with the plan. Ruby was loaded onto Winter's Airship, and Yang and Weiss followed Winter and the airship took off for the city's Emergency Hospital, leaving the infected Blake behind in WHITECROSS custody. But while she was in the mines, she crossed paths with an old friend...
Providence Mines
11: 20 am
Blake sat in her isolated chamber among hundreds of other individuals who were either acting like wild animals or filled with regret for their actions. Miners and guards walked through the mines keeping close watch on the infected individuals, but one miner stuck out. She was a mountain ram Faunus with blue hair and large grey horns...
" I hate to see you like this Blake." The girl said.
" Katie?" Blake said.
The girl was Katie Miller, a White Fang Defector and an old associate of Blake's, she and her old team defected following Blake's betrayal of Adam on a train assignment. She was an experienced warrior in the style of the ancient hunters, which trained the warriors to resist extreme amounts of pain. She was shorter than Blake, but was the deadliest sword fighter Blake had ever known.
" What are you doing here?" Blake asked.
" Duncan sent me to find you, he heard about what happened with Ocelot." Katie said.
" I had no idea that he was infected with this thing." Blake said.
" We've been trying to find the source of this thing as well, but you won't like the result." Katie said.
" Why wouldn't I like the result?" Blake asked.
" The Fang's involved in this." Katie said.
" What? How?" Blake asked.
" They abandoned somebody in the woods in Mistral a while back." Katie explained.
" Do you think this person is Patient Zero?" Blake asked.
" Probably, He's got Hera looking into this." Katie said.
" That's a good thing, she's known to have "extreme measures" to get information." Blake said.
Katie concluded their talk, slipping out of Providence clear of infection. Blake looked to the glass of the entry door to her chamber and saw only one thing, a Faunus who has been carrying the demons of her past for too long, demons which had destroyed her team, and made her nearly kill her captain. This was the last time Blake was going to let this happen to her, this was the final straw, she had run from her past for too long.
" Everybody has demons that they run from, only when we approach them we grow stronger." Duncan Wolfe said.
" You're right Duncan, I can't run anymore." Blake said.
This had marked the beginning of Blake's largest fight against the demons of her past, the demons that are responsible for unleashing this virus upon the world and made her nearly kill her captain. This time, she will not be alone. Team RWBY has been divided now, as they were once four, now they are only three.
This chapter ends with Blake vowing to take down The White Fang and she learned they were the ones who made patient zero as a result of abandoning them in the forests of Mistral. This person was held captive by the White Fang for Ransoming, but they abandoned them in the woods after the ransom was paid by the individual's parents. The next chapters is where the drama gets serious as the three are reduced to two and somebody begins the longest road to recovery.
WAIT AND SEE.