Ruby prodded Nox by poking his cheek with a finger. Instantly, his eyes flew open and he looked at her. His hand came up and he fumbled with the breathing mask they had put on him.
"Ruby," Nox greeted curtly once he had it pulled off. "I don't suppose you have any food."
Ruby raised an eyebrow at him. "Food?"
"My healing factor uses food to supply the material it needs," Nox explained quickly before devolving into a series of horse coughs, spitting up some blood in his hand as he did so. Once it passed, he swallowed deep, making Ruby cringe inward at the thought of swallowing blood.
"I'm currently trying to breathe and speak with half a lung," Nox said, sounding completely out of breath. "So please, food. Meat if you have it."
"Will this work?" Ruby asked, pulling out a small bundle a jerky Weiss had included in a survival kit she whipped up. Nox shrugged and took it from her, scarfing it down as fast as he could.
"I thought you didn't have a fighting style," Ruby stated, trying to make conversation. Nox shot her an odd look.
"I don't," he said, popping a piece of jerky into his mouth.
"That's not what I saw when you fought the Man in Grey."
Nox shrugged and ripped off another piece, chewing a swallowing quickly before saying,
"It was all instinct. Maybe a little bit of muscle memory after fighting Grimm for so long." Nox suddenly reached up and pulled a bandage off his shoulder. Ruby watched with wide eyes as he dipped his fingers in his open wound before turning around, lifting his pillows up, and drawing a symbol on the wall behind them in his own blood. When he was done, it turned the shadow into a solid black portal and he reached inside, pulling out a flask.
"What was that?" Ruby asked.
"Instant teleport," Nox stated. "If I have that blood crest at two locations, I can perform an instant teleport between them. It lets me travel without weighing myself down with gear." Nox unscrewed the cap of the flask and start downing the contents.
"I thought people with healing factors couldn't get drunk," Ruby said as the thought occurred to her.
"What made you think that?" Nox asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, a lot of people and writers say that."
Nox snorted. "Only people that don't know how getting drunk works." Ruby gave Nox a curious look, making him roll his eyes as he explained.
"To get drunk you just have to get alcohol into your bloodstream. It doesn't do any damage or harm to your system until it is getting filtered out by your liver, well after you've gotten drunk. And that goes with all poisons for the most part, until it starts damaging my body it's free to circulate in my system. Sucks when you accidentally eat poisonous berries, is great when you want the world to spin." Nox finished his statement was another sip from his flask and popped another piece of jerky into his mouth.
Silence stretched between them a moment as Ruby considered what she wanted to say next. After bouncing a few ideas back in forth in her mind, she eventually sighed as she decided to just jump to her reason for coming here.
"Nox," Ruby began as he ate, casting her look downward. "Who was that in the forest? Who were you two talking about?"
Nox's chewing slowed and his expression darkened. He finished chewing what he had and swallowed, taking a moment to consider what he was going to say.
"Ruby," Nox began. "I'm going to tell you right now, the less you know about these people the better."
"Why," Ruby urged.
"Because they're a virus," Nox hissed. "The moment you so much as hear their name they're a part of your life. And the deeper you go the more they cling on to you. Every single encounter increases their influence on your life, making it more devastating when they finally moved against you."
"Nox," Ruby said seriously. "They came after me. They attacked all of us, hurt my sister, hurt you. If you hadn't managed to hurt him, something that almost killed you, they might have kidnapped me. You need to tell me who the Man and Grey was talking about."
Nox's frown deepened, but slowly he nodded.
"Just know, all it takes is their name. Just their name and they will change your life irreversibly. I've seen it happen so many times."
"Who are they?" Ruby pressed, getting increasingly impatient with his stalling. Nox took a deep breath and let out a sigh.
"Do you remember what I was doing in Mountain Glenn?" He asked, shooting Ruby and odd look.
"You were hunting down the White Fang," Ruby recalled.
"No, I was hunting down the man in charge, Adam Taurus."
"But what does that have to do with these people?'
"Everything," Nox stated. "I used to work for these people, and so did Adam.
"When I ran with them, they were a government-sponsored agency based in a Faunus sanctuary town in the deserts of Vacuo. They were supposed to prevent and research ways to prevent the kind of radical Faunus groups that caused the first Faunus war. Obviously, they aren't really about that anymore, if ever." Nox shook his head and looked at Ruby. He took a deep drink from his flask and sighed.
"Adam and I… were teammates, you could say. We worked together along with a few others when we were part of the group. But things broke down and I left, thinking the organization had fallen apart. It had been years since I've so much as heard of him or anyone else from the group doing anything. I thought the group was done, so when Adam was made the leader of Vale's White Fang I immediately suspected our old group and set out to hunt him down. I didn't what they did to ever happen again. But when you and Blake helped me take out that White Fang camp, I started to think that maybe they didn't have anything to do with it. That this was just Adam moving on with his life, and that maybe I should start to do that same." Nox rolled his eyes and took a distainfull pull from his flask. "Clearly I was wrong."
"That doesn't tell me who they are," Ruby pointed out. Nox sighed.
"They call themselves The Project."
"He didn't say anything else," Ruby stated as she finished explaining her conversation to Blake and Weiss. They had met just outside of the school, making sure no one would hear them.
"Are you sure?" Blake asked. "That's all he said about The Project?"
"That's what I said," Ruby responded dryly.
"That doesn't make any sense," Blake said, biting her thumb in thought. Weiss and Ruby shared a look with each other.
"It is Nox," Weiss began. "You don't want to trust anything he says."
"What is your problem with Nox?" Ruby asked, not meaning it to be accusingly, even though it came off like that. Neither she nor Nox were saying anything about it, yet Weiss kept referring to it in those vague terms. It was getting annoying.
"Besides being part of a secret organization that attacked us and tried to kidnap you, and then refused to tell you anything about it except the name?" Weiss asked, a touch sarcastically. "I wasn't aware I needed more reason."
Ruby stared at her with a raised eyebrow.
"No," Blake began slowly. "I knew Adam. He never mentioned anything like that."
"Well, yeah," Ruby stated, "That is kind of the point of a secret organization." Weiss and Blake looked at her, then at each other, then shrugged.
"So what are we supposed to do about it?" Weiss asked.
"We look into the White Fang," Blake answered immediately. "If they're involved then we'll likely find some evidence of them in one of their bases."
"But how do we do that?" Ruby asked. "Isn't the kingdom already trying to track them down."
"Mercenaries," Weiss answered. Blake and Ruby looked at her oddly. Weiss blinked at them and suddenly looked uncomfortable. "The Schnee Company and the kingdoms both post rewards for information and capture of White Fang members. It's not quite as popular as it once was, but you can still find people putting together teams to scout out and attack anything to do with the White Fang."
"So we find one of these mercenaries, join their crew, and hope it leads us to information on the White Fang?" Blake clarified.
"Well, unless you have a better idea," Weiss said defensively.
"It might work," Ruby said slowly. "But are you sure you guys want to do this?"
The two of them looked at Ruby blankly for a moment.
"What do you mean?" Blake asked.
"Yeah," Weiss agreed, "they attacked you, going after them is the only thing we could do."
"Right," Blake said with a nod. Ruby smiled at them. She didn't want to admit it, but she was kind of looking forward to it. It sounded like it was going to be fun.