Walking around a crowded festival while standing a good head shorter than everyone else was not Neo's idea of a good time. Sure, the food stands smelled good, the cotton candy looked tasty, and the live music was decent, but she never enjoyed getting jostled around through a crowd while struggling to keep track of where she needed to go. But with Roman locked up on his little air prison, the annoyingly smug boss lady became the one giving Neo her marching orders. So after watching Emerald and Mercury absolutely wreck some chumps from Vacuo, the late afternoon found the diminutive trickster wandering around the fairgrounds looking for…
Looking for what exactly? Cinder complained about those teams from Vale, RWBY and JNPR. Something something Valean Recon Division, something something find them and keep tabs on them. Unfortunately for Neo, 'keeping tabs' on someone wasn't the same as 'killing or maiming' them, which was a lot more fun. She didn't even get permission to hurt them just a little bit. What Neo didn't get was why Cinder cared. So some kids from Oz's silly little school were doing something (undoubtedly boring) with Vale's military. Isn't that standard operating procedure at Atlas? So why does it suddenly become weird if Vale does the same thing? Whatever. The boss lady says "jump," and Neo is supposed to ask "how high." Well, wait for Cinder to say it, anyway. At least work usually provided an entertaining diversion, whether in the form of teasing Roman or watching the last moments of terror in someone's eyes. The little things in life, really.
Whatever the case, nothing in her instructions prevented Neo from taking a detour for some food. In fact, those high stools would almost certainly give her an advantage in height, so not stopping for a bite to eat could actually be considered a dereliction of duty. And since she and Roman agreed a while ago that it was best to stay on Cinder's good side, Neo would be a productive little spy and order some ice cream while carrying out her orders.
At least, she would if she had any money to pay for it. As much as she enjoyed the prospect of taking the shopkeep for a chump and stealing a bowl of delicious dessert for herself, she didn't want to risk getting caught and making a scene. Keeping a low profile (and murder) was her specialty. Stealing and sleight of hand was what Cinder kept that Emerald kid around for. Well, the dessert hut wasn't exactly crowded right now. She could at least hop up onto the stool and pretend to peruse the menu while looking around for any of her designated marks. She climbed into one of the seats and made a show of grabbing one of the laminated menus to look at the options. With a small kick, Neo spun the chair around and poked her head up over the menu to scan the festival as the world drifted lazily past her eyes.
First pass… nothing. Second pass… nothing. Third pass…
"Excuse me miss?" The shopkeeper asked from behind, "Are you going to order anything?"
Neo glanced back at the young man and pointed down at the menu with a shrug. The shopkeeper sighed, "Alright. If business starts to pick up, though, I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you still haven't decided by then."
She smiled at the shopkeeper, then rolled her eyes after she turned back around to continue glancing out over the crowd. Neo had half a mind to put her mission on hold to teach the shopkeep a lesson. One that would involve waiting until he got off shift before reminding him why it's a bad idea for proprietors to be rude to their customers. But professionalism overruled her desire for revenge, and she returned her focus to the matter at hand.
Lots of families walking around with shrieking children, young boys trying to impress girls with idiotic stunts, and a ridiculous number of huntsmen. If it weren't for the fact that Neo knew Cinder's plan would end up bringing a veritable force of nature down upon this stupid town, she'd wonder how the woman could possibly go up against this much firepower and come out on top. Good thing this new threat Cinder had her tracking was just some dumb recon division. Information gathering wouldn't help them very much when the multi-ton, killer chickens came home to roost. All she needed to do was keep them from finding out about the multi-ton, killer chickens in the first place.
There.
Flaming red hair, unmistakable gold and bronze armor, and a dumb-looking blonde hanging off her shoulder. It looked like Neo had finally found her mark.
"Okay, thanks anyway. Enjoy your day at the fair." The shopkeeper said with half-hearted cheer as Neo tossed the menu back onto the counter and jumped off the stool. Without the advantage of height anymore, Neo had to move quickly to avoid losing the Nikos girl. The crowd thinned out once she moved away from the food center, which made things a little easier. Even so, Neo had to dodge the occasional roughhousing children playing a game of tag (or trip them, which served the same purpose while giving Neo a small amount of satisfaction). While such diversions forced her attention away from the partners she needed to track, Neo eventually managed to get within hearing distance.
"You excited for the finals, Pyrrha?"
"I suppose, though I still think you should have been chosen."
The blonde kid sighed, "Look Pyr, I know the whole 'fame and fortune' thing has pretty much lost its charm for you, but look at it from an unbiased perspective. You are, without question, our strongest fighter. More than that, you don't need to rely on anyone else to be effective, which makes you perfect for the solo round."
"I know, I know." Pyrrha said, and Neo noticed that she looked increasingly uncomfortable as the conversation carried on, "But this is also a chance for you to really test yourself against some of the best the other kingdoms have to offer. Your match today showed that you have become a very talented huntsman, Jaune, and I think the finals round would have been a wonderful way to prove it."
Neo tuned out their banter while she continued to silently tail them. Her short stature came in handy for once, allowing her to remain inconspicuous among the population of visitors meandering about Beacon's grounds. If those two ended up walking somewhere a little more desolate, she would need to be careful. Her semblance made that pretty trivial, but only a fool would assume victory and not take steps to achieve it. As she walked, she kept her eye out for anyone that might be part of that Recon Division. She had hoped to find them talking with someone from RWBY or JNPR, thereby killing two birds with one stone, but alas… The Invincible Girl would have to suffice for now.
She followed them into Beacon, bending light around her small frame to remain hidden. The next hour found her trying not to retch as she watched the young couple get all lovey-dovey on the top of a stupid roof, and she seriously considered ditching them in search of a better mark. Even though she never had that kind of relationship with Roman, it made her acutely aware of just how much his absence left a hole in her day-to-day activities. If nothing else, she no longer had someone around who knew how to appreciate a good prank. Cinder was obviously off-limits, but the other two members of their posse didn't seem to have much patience for Neo's antics, either.
After watching the blond kid (John? Juane?) timidly reach for Pyrrha's butt for the third time, Neo decided that enough was enough. She had better things to do than watch teenagers be awkward. Roman wouldn't have blamed her, and she could probably justify it to Cinder as 'trying to make efficient use of her scouting time' or some other bullshit like that. Maybe she could track down that ice cream shopkeep and teach him a lesson, or-
"Think it's been long enough?"
"Yeah, it's probably safe to check on MacAuley's status with the relay."
… Or she could afford to stay a little longer with these two. She waited for them to slowly get up, dust themselves up, and mosey back down to the school grounds. Neo couldn't tell if they were taking their sweet time just for the hell of it, or because they were still following some sort of protocol to lose any potential followers. Well, joke's on them: their plan would have worked if they'd kept their stupid mouths shut.
At least she'd have something interesting to report to the boss lady.
In a small, quiet room far removed from all the laughter and festivities of the festival, MacAuley pored over his new creation. The dorm room lent to Bradford by Ozpin looked nothing like the living arrangements the Irishman had seen for RWBY or JNPR: they didn't have state-of-the-art radio technology scattered throughout their room with a multitude of cables growing every which way. The biggest hunk of metal, the relay itself, sat in the center of the room and looked like the hub of some nervous system as it connected to nearly every other piece of hardware involved. Given that every second counted on Remnant, MacAuley didn't spend time organizing the cables into neat bundles that snaked from one terminal to another in a neat line. Perhaps if he had time later, he could work on that with some help from Ozpin's crew, but for now? He needed to get this thing up and running.
The dorm room idea came from Ozpin himself. Bradford originally assumed that MacAuley's little gizmo would be going on top of Beacon Tower or somewhere with a similarly commanding view of the surrounding area. After some discussions with Ozpin and Qrow, he came to the agreement that the tower was too high-profile for any sort of covert work. Even if the tower didn't get too many visitors, enough dignitaries (both foreign and domestic) met with Ozpin in his office to the point where it could be a liability both in terms of location as well as the time it would take to get things up and running. Thus, the idea came about for XCOM to use a room in one of the presently empty dormitory wings on campus. While the facility was undergoing renovations for the majority of the year, Ozpin requested the work be put on hold for the duration of the Vytal Festival to avoid having the unpleasant sights and sounds of construction crews detracting from guests' enjoyment of Beacon. And since Bradford and Ozpin intended to bring XCOM's existence to light after the conclusion of the festival, the building presented an ideal opportunity for Bradford to set up his communication system without discovery or interruption.
The sound of a knock at the door interrupted MacAuley's thoughts. He looked up from his work and waited for a moment before he heard the second part of the knock. With a small sigh of relief, the engineer got up and opened the door, grinning at his visitor, "Hey, Barty. What's up, my man?"
"Ozpin informed me that you are almost ready to power on the relay... and requested that I assist you however I can." The professor said. While the rapid-fire pace of his speech still proved to be a source of amusement for MacAuley, the Irishman had spent enough time with Oobleck by now to have little trouble parsing the professor's words. Oobleck produced two thermoses, and MacAuley could see steam rising from their lids, "He suggested that I start by bringing... caffeinated substances to help you maintain your focus during this critical time."
The engineer chuckled and took one of the mugs from Oobleck. The professor may act like a hyperactive screwball 24/7, but perhaps that explained his impressive tastes in coffee. One whiff of the aroma coming from his container was enough to give MacAuley a little energy boost. He took a small sip before carefully setting the thermos down and returning to his work, "Well, I just finished wiring up the relay to the building's power grid thanks to the documents and schematics you gave me. It's not too different from the commercial infrastructure you'd find back on Earth, and I've already got some experience adapting my equipment to alien technology. It helped that Vahlen had already conducted some research on harnessing dust as a power resource, so these prototype regulators have undergone some testing before I slapped them into the system. Next up is to turn the damn thing on and calibrate the RF signals so that they hide out in an unused bandwidth. Won't get any background noise on the comms that way, and nobody will be able to sniff us out unless they specifically know where to look."
"… I understood some of those words."
"For starters, 'RF' stands for 'Radio Frequency.'" Mac said with a chuckle, "How familiar are you with signal processing?" A fair question, the Irishman realized. Up until now, he'd kept Oobleck busy with the power issue, so there wasn't really any chance to quiz him on the communications side of the project. Now that he'd finished integrating Shen's hardware into the dormitory room loaned to XCOM by Ozpin for the project, he wondered if he could rely on his assistant to help with the technical work or if he'd have to stick Oobleck with manual labor. As odd as the man was, MacAuley found himself warming up to the good doctor. Maybe he could teach Oobleck a thing or two about engineering after the festival finished.
"I've spent some of my free time learning how the CCTS works, but most of the publicly-available information is... unfortunately vague." The professor explained, "I must admit that my academic strength is in history! While science is incredibly fascinating, I have regrettably little time to do more than cursory investigations into its secrets. Especially during the school year."
MacAuley shrugged, "No big deal. Your radio engineers probably kept the information cryptic to avoid having some dumbass punks break everything. Hackers and hobbyists are a big enough problem on Earth, and they don't have the capability to completely sever communication between nations if they screw shit badly enough. I can only imagine how bad it would be if the CCTS went down for you guys." He glanced up at Oobleck, "Seriously, though… Remnant needs to look into a redundant comm system. I know there's been a few hiccups in achieving spaceflight around here, but perhaps XCOM could give you guys a few commsats as part of some sort of transplanetary trade deal. I dunno."
That was a discussion for later, though. Right now, MacAuley had a job to do. He double-checked all the wiring he'd spent the afternoon routing and started to slowly power up his systems.
"Alright… nothing's shorting out, so that's a good sign so far." He said, eyes scanning his diagnostic tools, "Now we just have to make sure that this thing can process and relay comm signals. You ready to help, Doc?"
In less than a second, Oobleck zipped up behind MacAuley and peered over his shoulder at the voltmeter readouts on the engineer's information panel, "Absolutely! What do you need me to do?"
MacAuley inched to his left, "Uhh… start by giving me some space, buddy. Good. Now, do you know how a Spectrum Analyzer works?"
"It… analyzes spectrums?"
"Well, you're not wrong." MacAuley sighed, "Alright, you see that gizmo over there? The coil wrapped around a little plastic bar thingy? I need you to take that over to the window and point it outside veeeeeeery carefully. Remember, we're trying to be discrete here."
Oobleck got up and grabbed the device, careful to avoid tripping on any of the multitude of wires snaking out of its back end. He reached the window, carefully poked the end of his device under the thick, green curtains, and nodded at Macauley. The Irishman flipped a switch and watched as his screen sprang to life. Waveform mountains came into existence on his signal graph, their lines constantly shifting as Oobleck's tool tried to filter out static noise and feed a steady signal to MacAuley's station.
"Alright, the sniffer is working. Let's see what we've got here…" MacAuley scanned the range of frequency to determine the bands actively used on Remnant. They didn't match the standards he was familiar with on Earth, obviously, and he briefly wondered what kind of communication protocols were in place for radio usage. He'd gathered from his research that Atlas kept a pretty tight lid on the inner-workings of their technology, so he'd have to do some digging later when he had more time for side projects. For now, though he found a couple of gaps in the frequency spectrum that looked like good candidates for sneaking his signal into RF space. It would take some time to properly tune his equipment to the correct frequencies, but it wasn't an impossible task. Over the last week and a half on Earth, MacAuley spent a lot of time with Dr. Shen in engineering to maximize the adaptability of the signal the radios could use. While Bradford's mainly wanted the ability to quickly re-tune XCOM's equipment if the main channel was somehow compromised, it had the helpful side-effect of making MacAuley's current job a whole lot easier.
The engineer continued to analyze the data, "Jesus, 100 dB down… That's gotta be the CCT signal. Guess it needs to be beefy if you guys want to send data across the fuckin' ocean." He cast a sheepish glance at Oobleck, "Pardon my French."
"Makes sense." Oobleck said, completely ignoring the last part, "Shall I continue sweeping?"
"Nah, I've captured all the data I need, I think. Let's get to tuning our own gear, shall we?"
Another knock on the door interrupted them, and the two men snapped their attention to the doorway. Ozpin selected this part of the dormitories specifically because it was currently decommissioned and therefore had no random foot traffic. If the wrong person stumbled upon MacAuley's operation here and blew the lid on XCOM…
MacAuley quietly flipped the strap fastening his sidearm and stood up. He watched Oobleck put down the RF sniffer and pick up his thermos, then widened his eyes as he thermos expanded into some sort of baton.
"Man," He whispered, "And I thought I'd seen everything with Crescent Rose."
The two men slowly approached the door and waited to see if the stranger would give up and go away. However, the fact that they came to this dormitory and chose to knock on this specific door didn't bode well for that wishful thinking. What were the odds of some lovey-dovey couple stumbling upon XCOM's operation while trying to find an unoccupied dorm room for a quick roll in the hay?
Before he could get carried away with more hypotheticals, he heard Pyrrha's voice on the other side of the door, "Are you sure this is the right one? Nobody's answering."
"I mean, I'm pretty sure… wait!" MacAuley rolled his eyes as Jaune remembered the second half of the knock. He re-holstered his handgun and opened the door to deliver a hard flick to his friend's forehead.
"Thanks for almost giving me a heart attack, jackass." The engineer said as he ushered in the duo. He took a quick glance up and down the hallway to make sure it was once again deserted before closing the door and returning to his work, "The entire point of a secret knock is to avoid shit like that."
Jaune rubbed his forehead and smiled apologetically, "Yeah, sorry about that."
"If I may ask, students," Oobleck cut in, "What are you doing here? This is a top-secret operation! It is imperative that it remain as inconspicuous as possible."
"Relax, doc. I gave Jaune the deets when he stopped by on Earth to help with another project. Figured we could use some help testing the radio equipment before we roll out Phase Two later tonight." MacAuley explained, "Speaking of, would you mind grabbing the sniffer again so I can calibrate the relay?"
Oobleck seemed satisfied with MacAuley's explanation and returned to his station with the RF detector. Jaune and Pyrrha sat down next to MacAuley while he pulled some hand tools out of his work bag.
"Anything we can do to help?" Pyrrha asked.
"Yes, actually. You see that boxy-looking shape on the screen there?" Pyrrha nodded as MacAuley pointed to the power wave on the analyzer, "We need to center it on a specific frequency. I was planning on going back and forth between fiddling with the relay and checking the wave on the analyzer, but we could probably save a lot of time if you two can watch the screen for me and tell me if I'm getting warmer or colder as I make the changes. There's a pretty large band gap at one-point-four gigahertz, so let's shoot for centering our signal around there for now."
Pyrrha and Jaune nodded as they watched their friend set up a target centerline on the x-axis. With all of his assistants in place, MacAuley pulled off a panel from the relay and got to work tweaking its internals. The four of them worked for several hours, with MacAuley making adjustments to the relay while the other three took turns using the detector, calling out frequency values, and helping the engineer log configurations to make calibrations easier to carry out in the future.
Then came the tests of the peripheral equipment. Jaune and Pyrrha took radio sets into other parts of the dormitory while MacAuley and Oobleck watched the diagnostic equipment to obtain valuable information on the RF usage.
"Audio sounds pretty crisp." MacAuley commented as he listened in with his own headset to Jaune and Pyrrha's test conversation, "How are we looking power-wise, Doc?"
"Signal is within your designated bandwidth, but the energy is currently at 30 dB down." Oobleck looked up at MacAuley, "If I'm understanding this correctly, that is undesirably high."
MacAuley sighed and sat down next to Oobleck to look at the graph, "It is. I pre-tuned this equipment with Shen back on Earth, but there must be something funky going on with the power regulators that we didn't anticipate." He grinned at Oobleck, "But hey, sounds like you're getting the hang of this signal stuff. So that's pretty cool."
The tests continued, with MacAuley adjusting his equipment to bring the signal outputs within the desired tolerances. Once he was satisfied with the performance of the headsets, he moved on to tuning the devices Bradford planned Phase Two. With the inflow of power into the relay's system calibrated during the headset tests, the second round of adjustments concluded far more quickly than the first. After a fair amount of work, swearing, troubleshooting, and no small amount of caffeine, the four associates congregated in the 'main' room once more several hours after sunset.
"Well, it looks like we're actually ahead of schedule." MacAuley said, checking his watch, "Shen anticipated hiccups during the final assembly and test process, so Bradford allotted us a lot of time to get this bad boy online. You kids feel like getting some celebratory drinks to kill some time before you're up to bat again? I'd say I'm buying, but I don't think the locals would accept Euros, so…"
"I wouldn't mind paying." Pyrrha offered, "And I could use a little food myself. Jaune and I haven't eaten since after our match today. What about you professor?"
Oobleck shook his head, "As much as I would enjoy celebrating the progress of science, I'm afraid I must report back to Ozpin. There are other matters I must attend to."
MacAuley gave the professor a salute, "Then we'll toast to your honor, Doc. We can also test the range on the relay, too. It's supposed to be able to transmit and receive all the way up to Amity, but the fairgrounds should be a good first test."
After they all filed out of the room and left the building, nobody was around to see the door open and close itself a minute later.
3 o'clock in the morning found the Vytal fairgrounds quiet as a tomb. All the festivities, parties, and general revelry died down several hours prior as the participants decided to get some much-needed sleep before the final round of the tournament started later that day. All the shops were locked up and not a soul could be found wandering the alleyways and dirt roads of the temporary town. Well, except for the patrolling mechs, of course. Security tightened not only after the Breach, but when Ironwood took Ozpin's comment about Atlesian security for the festival as a challenge instead of a observation. Still, aside from the occasional pair of armed robots stomping by, little else disturbed the peace and quiet of the secluded fairground.
Beacon, too, remained silent. The only lights turned on in the entire academy were the curious green spheres that illuminated the top of Beacon's tower. Students advancing in the tournament went to bed early while those no longer competing chose to enjoy a stress-free sleep without butterflies fluttering in their stomachs and keeping them awake. More than that, Goodwitch made it very clear that, as hosts of the Vytal Festival, she expected her students to set a good example for Vale's guests and respect curfew. Nobody who had the pleasure of enrolling in a class with Goodwitch was crazy enough to cross her.
Nobody, that is, except for eight figures that silently slipped out of the main dormitory and made their way through the shadows towards the fair grounds. Not a word passed between any of them until they exfiltrated the school's premises, split into two groups of four, and began to observe the mech patrols from the safety of the nearby tree line.
"So Bradford still hasn't told you about what Ozpin showed him?" Yang whispered to Ruby and Weiss, "Or Winter? I meant to ask you earlier, but never got around to it."
Ruby shook her head, "Said it would be a breach of Ozpin's trust, and that he's not about to jeopardize a new diplomatic relationship over something like that."
"Honestly, I wonder if Winter expects him to blab about it." Weiss sighed, "I've gotten the sense that she… doesn't hold him in the highest regard."
"And I get the sense that your sister doesn't hold anyone in the highest regard who isn't a Schnee." Yang retorted.
"She respects Ironwood." Weiss answered.
"Yeah, and the General can go suck it after throwing Ozpin under the bus in the aftermath of the Breach." Yang said, "Plus, I hear he's thrown some shade at Bradford, too."
"Well, we've got a job to worry about for now." Ruby reminded them, "And even if we don't know what Bradford knows, I don't see how this can be anything but helpful."
Yang nodded, "And it's nice to have comms back up. Sounded like Mac kept Jaune and Pyrrha busy for a couple of hours while he brought it online."
"Well, no time like the present to give it a whirl." Ruby tapped her ear, "Teams, report."
Blake's voice answered with perfect clarity, "Stealth team is in position and waiting."
"Showoffs." Yang muttered.
"Team JNP is en route!" Nora said cheerfully.
"Nora, that's not a team."
"Well it is right now!"
With a suppressed giggle, Ruby keyed her mic again, "How are we looking, Mac?"
"Metrics are all within expected ranges. My baby is practically purring right now."
"Careful, you don't want to offend Blake." Yang joked.
"Pssshhh, whaaat? Sabretooth and I go way back. No way would she be offended by a cat comment."
"She is listening to this conversation, you know." Blake deadpanned.
"Yeah, yeah. Alright, while you guys are busy getting set up and cracking jokes at my expense, I'm about ready to open up a connection to Central. All I have to do is push the button, and we should be good to go, Captain."
Ruby nodded, even though MacAuley had no way of seeing it, "Do it."
The line went dead for a minute, and Ruby assumed that MacAuley was busy working his engineering magic. As she reached the edge of the festival's clearing with Weiss and Yang, she heard another familiar voice in her head.
"Hello boys and girls, and welcome to another episode of Live and Impossible with your host, Beagle. We've got an exciting mission for you tonight that revolves around staying out of sight and not getting caught by Atlas's two-legged toasters. Is our highly-trained team of operatives up to the challenge? I'm pretty confident that they are, but we will have to see if RNGesus is on our side for this one."
"Nice to see you too, Captain." Pyrrha cheerfully greeted.
"Ah ah ah. Central. Since apparently Bradford's got other shit to deal with, he's assigned me to act as the coordinator for this op, so I'll be damned if I'm not giving myself a temporary promotion while the boss is away. Besides, lil' Rubles is the Captain here. So let's get down to it. What have you got for me so far?"
"Lot of patrols." Blake reported, "Looks like Ironwood is concerned about something."
"Maybe it's just a show of force?" Yang suggested.
"At three in the morning?" Beagle asked, "I think Sabretooth is onto something. Either way, we need you guys to get past those patrols somehow. Got any options worked out yet?"
Ruby had already been considering solutions even before Beagle brought it up. She had several avenues that could make their life easier, but nothing that could be considered a definitive answer. Either way, may as well start following up on her hunches.
"Pyrrha, how many targets can your Tactical Sensor track?"
"I've tested it up to about ten. The bigger problem is that the target is lost once it moves out of visual range." Pyrrha answered.
"Doc's actually playing around with a software update in her spare time that should help with that, but I think it can still be useful for now." Beagle said, "If you can get to a high vantage point, it should be pretty easy to keep all the 'bots in your line of sight, yeah?"
"Exactly what I was thinking." Ruby said, "You can provide support from the tree line while the rest of us move in. Blake, I want you to ghost your way into the center of the grounds with the heavier population of mechs. Ren, follow her when it's safe."
"Understood."
"The rest of us will stick to the periphery. Bradford's recon teams identified a lot of ideal locations to deploy the motion sensors, and a good chunk of them form a perimeter around the grounds."
Weiss checked her pack for the fourth time to make sure that she still had all of the electronics MacAuley had given her. Motion sensors keyed to link up with the Irishman's wireless network once her team powered them up. Small, silent, and beige, nobody would notice their presence unless they specifically knew what to look for.
Ruby thought that Bradford was pretty smart for coming up with motion sensors for this plan. Surveillance cameras toed a dangerous line with invasion of privacy, while motion sensors simply determined the time and location of activity. The system wouldn't be able to catch a criminal in the middle of a crowd, but it could alert Bradford (and Ruby, who now had access to the network from her scroll) to the presence of someone loitering somewhere well past curfew.
"There's an opening in the patrol pattern coming up in the next couple of seconds." Ren said.
"Confirmed." Pyrrha agreed, already in position, "Shadow Team will have a small window to slip past the Knight's in five seconds."
"Wish we had a cool name like Shadow Team."
"Nora…"
After five seconds, Ruby had no indication of neither Blake nor Ren actually breaking from the tree line to infiltrate the fairgrounds proper, but she supposed that was the point of picking them in the first place. In any case, Pyrrha's confirmation that they had, in fact, moved on their target provided all the evidence Ruby needed, and so she ordered the rest of her team to carry out their own part of the objective. With a silent wave, Yang walked off to join up with Nora and left her sister alone with Weiss.
"What if it's something really groundbreaking?" Weiss asked as she carefully advanced with Ruby. Apparently her mind was still stuck on their previous conversation, "Like magic?"
Ruby actually stopped in her tracks to stare at Weiss, "I have the ability to move faster than the eye can see, your Semblance lets you slow down time, we just got back from a world of zombifying insects, cyborg abominations, and mind control powers, and you're hung up on magic?"
"I… Fair point." Weiss admitted. The two of them reached the main gate and got to work. Weiss pulled out one of the sensors from her bag and handed it to Ruby.
"Don't forget, the recon teams left little calling cards to mark locations they felt would be ideal." MacAuley reminded them, "A nickel on a table, a German shot glass leaning against a booth, or a McDonalds business card stuck in the grass. You're free to ignore them if you disagree, but Bradford's been sending some of XCOM's best Scouts on these casual ops over the last couple of days."
"Understood. Let's get to work, team."
With Pyrrha staying back to provide status updates on the droid patrols, the rest of RWBY and JNPR rigged the fairgrounds with MacAuley's supply of sensors. Under the cover of darkness, they installed and camouflaged the hardware so that anyone enjoying the festival would have to be actively looking for the gadgets to find them. And even then, the sensors were so small that Ruby suspected mere knowledge of their existence wouldn't be enough to find them anyway.
The mech patrols proved to be a major annoyance, and Ruby figured that their presence easily doubled the time it took for her team to finish setting everything up. Because discovery was absolutely, positively not an option, Ruby had made it clear to everyone to err on the side of caution when it came to avoiding discovery. Even Yang and Nora, the two loudest and most gung-ho members of the squad, understood the delicacy of the situation and managed to stay out of sight with Pyrrha's assistance. Ruby didn't sit completely idly while waiting for the patrols to pass, however. She pulled out her scroll and opened up Vahlen's software that MacAuley installed for her before the operation.
A crude map appeared on her screen, and glowing nodes that signified active motion sensors dotted the fairgrounds, with more coming online each time she checked. The locations of the mechs pinged on the screen as they came within range of an active sensor, and Ruby noted that her team achieved near 100% coverage of the fairgrounds by the time the last pair reported all sensors online. Ruby checked her scroll and saw that the Knights remained tagged no matter where they marched on their patrols.
"Good work, team." She called out, "All sensors are reporting operational, and I have a lock on all patrols in and around the fairgrounds. Looks like we're all set to move onto the next objective."
"Provided MacAuley's jury-rigged booster antenna lasts for more than a few hours."
"He is listening to this conversation, jackass." MacAuley said.
"Easy there, big boy. Just a joke."
Ruby rolled her eyes at the banter, "C'mon, let's get moving. Our work here is done, but there's still plenty to do before sunrise. We can sleep when we're back on the Temple Ship."
With a chorus of assent from her squadmates, Ruby and Weiss picked up their equipment and made for the tree line once more.
For the last hour, Winter neither made a single movement nor uttered a single sound save for her quiet breathing. At her superior officer's request, Winter agreed to keep an eye on her sister and her team that evening. He cited some suspicions after Ruby had a meeting with Doctor Polendina's daughter, and while Winter wasn't foolish enough to wonder how Ironwood had obtained such evidence, she had a hard time believing that her own sister would be complicit in… skullduggery. Regardless, orders were orders and so Winter continued to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening with Weiss, said her goodbyes for the night, and then immediately doubled back to observe… no, spy. No point in trying to make the deed sound less ugly than it truly was.
With the surveillance tools of her trade, Winter watched as the four huntresses talked in their room. The other team, JNPR, joined them shortly thereafter. She didn't dare get close enough to use audio equipment, so the stealth specialist was forced to rely on lip reading. And while a maddening portion of the conversation took place out of her field of view, Winter managed to catch enough to learn that they planned to do something around 2 am. She also picked up a curious word that she didn't recognize.
Excom.
For a moment, she wondered if her lip reading skills had slipped, but then she saw another of the students say the exact same thing. Perhaps it was a codeword for their little late night operation? Winter didn't know, but she fully intended to see what Weiss and her friends planned to do under the cover of night.
That idea brought Winter to where she was now: crouched in a tree, muscles stiff from remaining motionless, and watching as RWBY and JNPR slowly moved about the fairgrounds. She saw them moving in pairs, carrying small bags and stopping to crouch and fiddle with some sort of electronic device every few minutes. She continued to watch as Ruby tapped her ear, nodded at whoever was on the other end of the line, and gave a thumbs-up to Weiss. They took cover from a nearby patrol of mechs (Winter would have to talk with Ironwood about how easy it was for some students to evade his top-of-the-line robotic soldiers), before leaving the fairgrounds. From what she'd been able to observe, the two teams still had plenty left in store for their midnight jaunt. Winter planned to follow them and see if she could collect any more damning evidence, though she wondered what could possibly have caused her dear sister to fall so low.
Well, she had a hunch. Excom.
Ironwood definitely would need to know about this.
Neo lazily twirled her umbrella as she invisibly watched the Atlesian Specialist watch the kids. After years of playing her personal brand of Hide-and-Seek, Neo had learned how to carefully mask her presence to the senses of her mark's Aura. She figured out early on that ill intent was the surest way to set off internal alarms for most huntsmen, which (now that she thought about it) may have played a role in shaping her whimsical attitude towards life. Probably helped offset her occasional spurts of murderous fantasies Maybe she'd bring that up with Roman when she got the chance. It would be pretty funny to see his reaction to a question like that coming out of the blue. Dust, she missed having him around.
In any case, she had no difficulty avoiding ill intent tonight. The Stoic, Snooty Schnee was actually making Neo's job ten times easier tonight, whether she realized it or not. Why bother sticking her own pretty little neck out to sabotage the children trying to play heroes when she could just let the Atlesian spy stir up distrust between two Kingdoms all on her own? Sure it may have been fun to add a Schnee-shaped notch to her umbrella, but the disciplined actions and attitude of this one set of Neo's own set of internal alarms. No, tonight she would remain safely out of the spotlight. Neo still has plenty of information to relay back to the boss lady, and she managed to accomplish her secondary objective without having to lift a single finger. Or foot. Whatever.
With her work (or lack thereof) done, Neo picked herself up, lightly dusted off her jacket, and set off for the dormitories. Cinder probably wouldn't appreciate getting woken up at four in the morning, which made the prospect of doing so all the more amusing for Neo. Heck, the chance to see a groggy, bleary-eyed fire witch with a bad case of bed head almost made the risk of death-by-fire worth it.
Almost.
A/N: Okay, wow. I asked for thoughts and opinions about Aura last time, and you all came out in droves to pitch in your two cents. Some of you may have noticed that I wasn't as talkative these last two weeks as I usually am, but I promise that I read everything that got posted. Thank you all for taking the time to write your perception of how Aura works, and even more so for enjoying this story as it moves along. We're getting closer to the end of the Vytal arc. Shit isn't hitting the fan quite yet, but the wheels are starting to turn.