Chapter 9 – Red eye

"Blake! Try to listen to what she has to say to you!" Yang growled at Blake, when her, Blake and Weiss returned to the ship, while Ruby searched for Alice, who had apparently disappeared in the midst of the Grimm battle. Yang already predicted Blake to be stubborn as a mule and refused to listen to Weiss apology. Blake was incredibly dissatisfied with the addition of the Schnee girl on the team. "WHY should I listen to anything this rich, spoiled traitor has to say?! NOTHING she says can change the fact, she left me to die!" Yang scratched her hair furiously "Just TRY to listen, please!" Blake looked angrily at Yang "I refuse to fly ANYWHERE with HER on board!" Yang sighed subtly "Fine, you asked for it... If you won't listen to reason, I'll make you do it by force." Yang grabbed Blake's collar pushing her backwards while starring coldly into Blake's eyes. She grabbed Blake's arms and swiftly tied them to a metal pole running across the aircraft ceiling with her scarf. Blake looked surprised by the sudden attack, barely being able to touch the floor with her toes, hanging like a piece meat. It all went by so quickly, but it didn't take long for Blake to looks furiously over at Yang, who clapped her hands together in satisfaction. Yang waved Weiss over to her "Now, please tell Miss Kitty over here how it all went down. I really don't want to bother with this anymore." Weiss turned around and sat down on a nearby bench, crossed her legs and put her hands on her knees to get her composure. She began telling the same story she told Ruby.

One story and apology later, Blake still looked angry, but she could see Weiss' reasons and chose to forgive her for now. Yang proceeded to loosen up the scarf from Blake's wrists, not knowing that Alice had entered the aircraft that exact moment. Alice's face distorted in all sorts of emotions but ended up turning steaming red by seeing this scene. She slowly turned around and stumbled out the aircraft entrance. Blake and Yang looked at each other and shrugged, but Weiss' curiosity was peaked "Who is that girl?"

Outside the aircraft Ruby just returned right before Alice fell out of the entrance. Ruby hurried over to her side and hold Alice in her arms. Alice's face was burning red and her nose bled heavily. Ruby began to panic as she frantically tried to get Alice to speak "What happened!?" Alice opened her eyes weakly "Y-your sister... and Blake... they.. I.. but I..." No more words came out of her mouth before she let out a sigh of defeat. Ruby cried over her fallen comrade, swore to avenge her and hurried inside the aircraft to find out, what caused this – only to find nothing. Blake sat by the control panel and played with a piece of thread from her clothes and Yang was about to tell Weiss about Alice. Ruby sighed out in confusion "Everything seems to be fine in here.." Alice quickly jumped through the entrance "But I.. ?!" She quickly cleared her throat and tried to remain calm as she stiffly walked over to a corner, tripping a couple of times on the way, to just be by herself and not get surprised like that again. Ruby wondered if the was really OK, but assumed she'd just seen a ghost or something.

With everyone on board, Blake turned on the engines to go to their next destination. Weiss, who actually didn't know the plan, asked Yang about it. Yang told her about the facility in Vale, where they could possibly find clues about the Grimm attack. They were on their way to another facility just outside of Vale.

Flying past the woods they reached a large meadow. In the distance Blake could sense the presences of a building. Blake called the others over to her side "Do you think that's it?" They agreed to land near it, to find out the answer to that question. When they came near it, the building was much larger than anticipated. The location was pretty far off the nearest civilization, so to find it without coordinates, would be pretty difficult. The structure was surrounded by curled up chunks of metal, which prior was an electric fence. The building was in ruins, most likely because of a Grimm attack. The place seemed abandoned, but the five girls were prepared for possible attacks. They hurried over to the main doors, which were busted open from the inside. "I wonder if we'll find anything in here at all..." Ruby mumbled before they entered.

The interior of the facility seemed unsettlingly familiar – The décor and structure was the same. Here there were bullet holes, blood and claw marks everywhere as well. Not a soul could be found, not a body, no nothing. "Well, this seems familiar" Yang stated "We have to find the computer central of this place quickly – all this blood gives me the creeps!" Alice pointed at a map – The overall structure of this facility was exactly the same as the prior one, so it would be a breeze to find the computer room. They ran to this room very quickly to not waste any time. Getting to the room, getting Blake to hack the computers and getting the info went almost too smoothly. Blake found the same video they found at the other place, except this version had an ending "... If anyone in any of the other facilities sees this video – Find the Grimm Queen! She possesses the gene to control this problem!" The video end here "The Grimm...Queen?" Ruby mumbled confused. Blake tried to research this term and found something only a couple of minutes after. She got the attention of the girls as she found another video. In it, a man with a blood red eye enters the screen and says: "To all facilities; We do not need the Grimm Queen anymore. We found the solution and already have we advanced it. If you find GQ, eliminate her, since she possesses the power to destroy our achievements!" The recording turns to static and a faint shadow of a Grimm can be seen in a few seconds in the end of the recording before the footage stops. "What the heck was that about?" Yang spouted while making a table-flipping motion. "We can't know for sure, but that man seemed awfully fishy, and I'm not talking about the eye. It was like he was not even really present" Blake muttered. Weiss, who had been unusually quiet since they began watching the videos, suddenly shouted out "I remember! I've seen him before!" "The red-eyed man?" Ruby asked startled "No, the man from the first video. Many years ago, when I was very young, I interrupted one of my father's meetings – with this man! I don't remember much, but he said something about harvesting Grimm powers or something like that. What I do remember is, my father not wanting to have anything to do with him" Weiss explained calmly "How is your memory going to help us now?" Blake sneered at Weiss "Oh you see, if we find out who this man is, we may be able to figure out who he worked for and find these people" Weiss answered with a smirk "Even though my father doesn't want to work with some groups, he still researches ...ehm.. researched them properly and kept their data stored. If we can go back to my father's house in the forest, we may be able to find some info on him". Yang nodded "That is definitely as good a lead as we can get for now". Going back to their aircraft once more, they made their way to the Schnee residence in the forest.

Weiss had a look of regret on her face as she looked at the ruined building "I never thought I'd come back here this quickly..." she sighed. "You have to be careful in there, the building isn't exactly the most stable after the Grimm attack" "We will!" Alice quickly replied. They walked carefully up into the office, where Weiss' father's computer was located, seemingly unharmed. The office in general wasn't very damaged compared to the rest of the rooms actually. The back-up battery in the computer was running very low, so Weiss had to be very quick in her research. She browsed through the client library and found the man – his name was Solomon Rouge. She quickly found the red-eyed man as well, a man named Vincent Noir. On this picture he didn't have the red eye though. Ruby noticed 11 other profiles on the side of the screen "Who are they?" "These are other people involved with this Rouge guy". Yang quickly noticed "Hey! I see this Red-eyed Noir dude was living here in Vale, do you think we could pay him a visit?" Blake saw a spark in Yang's eyes and nodded "If he still lives there, that is" Suddenly a large thump could be heard from the hall outside of the office followed by a loud cry from Alice. Everyone ran out to see what happened and found Alice on the floor with one of the building's roof-supporting beams right beside her, which had nearly crushed her. Luckily only her hand was hit. She had gotten a small gash on the back of her hand. Ruby took hold of Alice's hand and kissed it on the wound and her forehead right after. Alice blushed and had a weird look on her face "Yang used to do this when I got hurt when I was younger. She told me, my mother used to do the same to her. This should make the pain go away faster" Ruby said with a faint smile on her face. Alice blushed even more and tried to stutter a gratitude. Meanwhile Yang observed the scene with tearful eyes "They grow up so fast" she said with a proud motherly voice. Ruby pouted at Yang. The older sister grinned stupidly but quickly got her composure back "enough with that, we have to move on before this house collapses on us" Yang said with a serious face. "We have to check in on the others too, before we continue our search" "The others?" Weiss interrupted "Yeah, we have an underground camp where a good bunch of civilians, Pyrrha, Jaune and Coco are at right now" Yang explained. Weiss let out a sigh of relief "We are not alone after all, huh".